CHAPTERS 



FROM THE 



Bible of the Ages 



"Slowly the Bible of the race is writ; 
Each age, each kindred adds a verse to it, 
Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan. 
While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud, 
While thunder's surges burst on cliffs of cloud, 
Still at the prophets 1 feet the nations sit. 1 ' 

— J. R. Lowell. 

" We have but part of our Holy Bible. The time will come when, as in the Middle 
Ages, all pious books shall be called Scriptures Sacra — Sacred Scriptures. 1 ' — T. VV. Higsixsox. 



Compiled and Edited by 

G. B. STEBBINS. 

w 



DETROIT, MICHIGAN: 

PUBLISHED BY THE EDITO 

1872. 




3/) 
5* 



Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1872, by 

GILES B. STEBBINS, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



PRINTED BV 

The Daily Post Company, 
detroit. mich. 



Klectrotyi'Ers, f 



TO THE GROWING MULTITUDE 
Ok Thoughtful Men and Women, 

WHO BELIEVE THAT "THE WORD OF GOD IS NOT BOUND" BY 
ANY LIMITATIONS OF BOOK, OR RACE, OR TIME, 
OR RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS, 

THIS COMPILATION, 

From the Teachings and Inspirations of many Centuries, 

AND OF DIFFERENT PEOPLES, 
IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED. 



INDEX. 



CHAPTER I. HINDOSTAN BRAHMINISM. 

PAGE 



Hymns from Rig Veda, 9 

Hymns from Atharva Veda, 17 

Hymns from Sama Veda, ........ 17 

Vedas, 19 

Bhagvat Geeta. — Extracts 22 

Code of Menu, 27 

The Brahmo-Somaj, ......... 31 

CHAPTER II. BUDDHISM. 

Five Buddhist Commandments, etc., ..... 35 

Gathas or Hymns, ......... 39 

Dhammapada, or Path of Virtue, by Buddha. — Extracts, . . 40 

A Modern Buddhist. — Views of Chao Phya Thipakon, . . 48 

CHAPTER III. CHINA. 

Confucius and Mencius. — Extracts, ...... 51 

CHAPTER IV. PERSIA. 

Zoroaster, Zend A vesta, etc., . . . . . . 63 

Modern Parsee Catechism, ....... 70 

CHAPTER V. EGYPT. 

The Divine Pymander. — Extracts, 72 

Inscriptions on Egyptian Tombs, ...... 75 

Amun to Thotmes, , 76 

CHAPTER VI. HEBREW. 

Old Testament — Isaiah, David, 78 

Talmudical and Rabbinical Writings, . . . . . . 80 

Philo Judaeus. — Of those who offer Sacrifice, etc., ... 83 

Modern Judaism. — Rabbis Wise, Lilienthal, etc., .... 89 



2 



INDEX. 



CHAPTER VII. GREECE. 

PAGE 



Orpheus, Pythagoras, Cleanthes, Aristotle, .... 97 

Plato. — Wisdom and Self-Knowledge, etc., ..... 100 

CHAPTER VIII. ROME. 

Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca. — Extracts, . . . 112 

CHAPTER IX. NEW TESTAMENT. 

Jesus and Paul 124. 

CHAPTER X. AL KORAN. 

Mohammed, . . . . . . . . . . 127 

CHAPTER XI. EUROPE. 

Scandinavian Eddas, . . . . . . . . • 130 

Justin Martyr, St. Augustine, Basil, Arndt, Thomas A. Kempis, 132 

Luther, Zschokke, Jean Paul, Goethe, Humboldt, etc., .' . 137 

Renan. — Jesus of Nazareth, . . . . . . . 152 

Swedenborg. — The Spiritual Man Real, 156 

CHAPTER XII. GREAT BRITAIN. 

Taliesin. — Questions, 158 

Lord Bacon. — Of Adversity, etc. . . . . . . . 159 

John Milton — Plea for Free Thought, . . . . 161 

Philip Sidney. — Arcadia, . . . . . . . . 163 

William Penn. — No Cross, no Crown, etc., .... 164 

Robert Barclay. — Address to King Charles II, . . . 173 
Henry More, Adam Clarke, Addison, J. Wesley, Mary Fletcher, 

Coleridge, Carlyle, . . . . . , . . 174, 

What Religious Teachers should do. — Frances Power Cobbe, . 180 

The Religion of the Heart. — Leigh Hunt, . , . . 183 
Herbert Spencer, Sydney Smith, Ruskin, Spurgeon, Dickens, John 

Robertson, 191 

The Future that awaits us. — Catharine Crowe, ... 195 

Reign of Law. — Duke of Argyle, . . . . . . 198 

Sayings and Foretellings, etc. — F. W. Newman, . . . 200 

The Study of Physics. — John Tyndall, 206 

Wm. Howitt, Max Muller, Buckle, ..... . 208 

Human Interest in History. — Moral Elements. — Froude, . . 211 



INDEX. 



3 



PAGE 

The Church of the Future. — E. N. Dennys, .... 215 

God's Voice nearer than the Book. — Colenso, . . . 218 

Toleration, and Study of the Bible. — F. Temple, . . . 218 

CHAPTER XIII. SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS. 

The Sympathy of Religions — Extracts. — T. W. Higginson, . . 221 

CHAPTER XIV. AMERICA. 

The Divine Principle within. — Woolman, .... 238 

Sayings and Opinions. — Thomas Paine, . . . . . 239 

The Light within, etc. — Elias Hicks, 241 

Essentials in Religion. — W. E. Channing, ..... 243 

Man's Demands, God's Commands, etc. — H. C. Wright, . . 246 

Creeds. — S. J. May, , 251 

Free Thought and Free Speech. — W. L. Garrison, ... 251 

The Reformer. — J. G. Whittier, 259 

Forgiveness and Love. — Lydia M. Child, ..... 262 

Spiritual Christianity. — T. Starr King, ...... 263 

R. Collyer, J. M. Peebles, John Weiss, ..... 266 

Free Religion and a Free State. — S. Johnson, .... 269 

Culture Demanded by Modern Life, etc. — E. L. Youmans, . 272 

Growth and Self-Sacrifice. — E. H. Chapin, ..... 274 

Spiritual Views. — R. D. Owen, ...... 277 

Ministration of Departed Spirits. — H. B. Stowe, .... 279 

Future Life Near and Real. — H. W. Beecher, ... 283 

How Ideas get Spoken, — Reformers. — H. Tuttle, .... 285 

Sentiments of Progressive Friends, etc., ..... 287 

Dogma versus Truth.— David Newport, ..... 288 

God's Command to Impart Truth. — B. Hallowell, , . . 290 

Lesson of Quakerism. — A. M. Powell, . . . . . 293 

Quietism and Work. — C. D. B. Mills, 295 

Christ's Character, etc. — H. Bushnell, H. Bisbee, .... 297 

Immortality in the Light of Science. --W. J. Potter, . . 300 

Future of Earth and Man. — William Denton, .... 305 

True Prayer — Fifty Affirmations. — F. E. Abbott, . . . 309 

Physical Condition of Humanity. — H. Seaver, . . . . 317 

Teachings, — A Prayer. — Theodore Parker, . . . . 318 

Sayings. — A. B. Alcott, 325 

Religion and Science. — Gerritt Smith, ..... 326 

Disappointment—A Teacher in God's School, etc. — T. L. Cuyler, . 328 

The New Religion. — Theodore Tilton, 332 



4 



INDEX. 



PAGE 

Sanctity of Marriage. — Mary F. Davis, . . . . . . 335 

The Heavenly Kingdom Within us. — Cora L. V. Tappan, . 338 

Liberty. — Emma Hardinge, ........ 340 

Sanctity of Maternity. — Eliza W. Farnham, . . . . 341 

Reverence for Motherhood. — Mrs. L. B. Chandler, . . . 342 

Woman's True Position. — Lucretia Mott, ..... 345 

Spiritual Teachings. — S. J. Finney, . . . . . . 350 

The Free Religious Movement, etc. — O. B. Frothingham, . 356 

Religious Liberty. — C. H. Malcom, . . . . . . 365 

Being and Doing. — C. W. Wendte, ..... 369 

Teachings. — R. W. Emerson, . . . . . . . 371 

Teachings. — A. J. Davis, . 374 

Love and Good Works the Life of Heaven. — Charlotte B. Wilbour, 383 

Birth to the Higher Life. — A. J. Davis, ... . . . 385 

Appendix A., etc. . . . . . . . . . 391 



PREFACE. 



THE title of this book bespeaks its aim and scope. 
For years I have felt the need and importance of 
such a work, and have waited for abler hands to under- 
take it on a larger scale ; but the people want, and should 
not wait. After no small labor and care in research 
and selection, I send this out, to meet in some degree 
a pressing popular want, and to help, as an incentive, to 
the more comprehensive work which a fit company of ripe 
and large-hearted scholars should unite to prepare. Our 
Bible, as read in the churches and in our homes, is but 
the record of Hebrew thought and life, and myth ; in part 
fragmentary, inconsistent and imperfect, yet all to be accepted 
as true and miraculously infallible, — whether Reason, Con- 
science and Intuition consent or not, — according to a strange 
theory of theology that God made these supernatural revela- 
tions only to this people for a certain time and then ceased. 

The Bible of the Ages is the deepest thought, the highest 
inspiration, the clearest spiritual light and life of the whole 
human race, constantly being lived and written, and to be read 
with free and open mind, and the hopeful thought that richer 
chapters are yet to come, for us and for those who may live 
after us ; since truth and inspiration are the heritage of human- 
ity, correlated, evolved, and developed into higher harmony and 
perfectness by spiritual laws, which are the Divine Intent, or 
" the will of God." 

Keeping in mind our need of the experiences and aspira- 
tions, not only of the Hebrews, but of all humanity, my effort 



6 



PREFACE. 



has been to select some of the best thoughts from different 
races and ages. Full statements of systems of religion or phi- 
losophy cannot be given in these narrow limits, yet much of 
their vital and essential elements will be found, gathered from 
" Sacred Books," from old philosophers, and from later teachers 
and seers and reformers. Of course but few are chosen from 
many equally valuable utterances, and whole nations are, of 
necessity, passed by, yet enough is offered to show the narrow- 
ness and absurdity of our traditional and theological education, 
that only one book called the Bible is divinely inspired, and 
must therefore be the master of the soul. This education is 
losing its power, and we want a broader outlook, 

"To seek for Truth, wherever found, 
On Christian, or on Heathen ground." 

These rich Chapters are gathered from this broader field, 
and will show that truth is not partial or limited, but fluent, 
penetrative and universal, growing, from within^ with the growth 
of humanity. 

Inspiration — the in-breathing of truth — is for all receptive 
souls, all golden temperaments, all wise and earnest seekers for 
light and strength who strive to know and obey the laws by 
which they may win such rich reward. Hindoo, and Persian 
and Greek, and American, have spoken words noble as the best 
of Hebrews, and their sayings are mingled with truth and error 
even as are those of the Prophets and Apostles of Judea. 

From the simple beauty of the Vedas, and the wise and 
wondrous insight of Buddha, to the noble words of men and 
women of this generation, we shall find proof enough of 
this in these chapters, and ample proof too of the unity and 
fraternity of ideas, the identity of radical elements and under- 
lying principles, constituting that Sympathy of all Religions 
which bigotry and superstition have hidden from our sight, 
and which the jar and jangle of theological disputes have well- 
nigh banished from our thoughts. If read with open mind 
and firm resolve, while proving all things to hold fast only that 



PREFACE. 



7 



which is good, they must help to more impartial judgment, 
to freedom from arbitrary authority in matters of opinion, 
and to that hopeful and earnest courage which helps to a 
better future. 

I have aimed to use only the best and most authentic and 
acknowledged authorities, especially in quoting from the older 
and more obscure writings. 

I am fortunately able to obtain some valuable translations 
of Talmudic and Rabbinical writings, from Rabbi Lilienthal, of 
Cincinnati, and Rabbi E. B. M. Browne, of Evansville, Indiana. 
In an Appendix will be found authorities, dates, and such brief 
explanations as are indispensable. 

While the selections from ancient writings are of signal 
value and interest, the sweet and noble utterances and aspira- 
tions of later days, the great lessons of science, and the 
teachings in our own time and country, on vital questions and 
opinions which we must meet and use wisely for our better 
future, justly claim a good share of space. These later 
teachings will show that, if there has been an " eclipse of 
faith" in creeds and dogmas, there is an increase of rational 
knowledge, of intuition, and of spiritual power and freedom, 
making true the words of the poet : 

" For I doubt not through the Ages 
One increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened 
With the process of the suns." 

GILES B. STEBBINS. 



Detroit, Michigan, 
May, 1872. 



CHAPTER T. 



HINDOST AN.— BR AHMIN ISM. 



FROM THE RIG VEDA.* 



God the Creator. 

1. Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? 

2. He who gives life. He who gives strength; whose com- 
mand all the bright gods revere ; whose shadow is immortality, 
whose shadow is death. Who is the God to whom we shall 
offer our sacrifice ? 

3. He who, through his power, is the one King of the 
breathing and awakening world. He who governs all, man 
and beasts. Who is the God to whom we shall offer our 
sacrifice ? 

4. He whose greatness these snowy mountains, the sea, 
and the distant river proclaim. He, whose these regions are, 
as it were, His two arms. Who is the God to whom we shall 
offer our sacrifice ? 

5. He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm, 
He through whom the highest heaven was established — He 
who measures out the light in the air. Who is the God to 
whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? 

6. He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by His 
will, look up, trembling inwardly — He over whom the rising 
sun shines forth. 



* For date of Vedas, translators' names, and explanations, see Appendix A. 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



7. Wherever the mighty water-clouds went, where they 
placed the seed and lit the fire, thence arose He who is the 
sole light of the bright gods. vVho is the God to whom we 
may offer our sacrifice ? 

8. He who by His might looked even over the water- 
clouds, the clouds which gave strength and lit the sacrifices ; 
He alone who is God above all gods. 

May He not destroy us. He the creator of the earth; 
or He the righteous, who created the heavens ; He who cre- 
ated the bright and mighty waters. 

Hymn to Indra. 

1. Keep silence, well ! We offer praises to the great Indra, 
in the house of the sacrificer. Does he find treasure for those 
who are like sleepers ? Mean praise is not valued by the 
omnipresent. 

2. Thou art the giver of horses, Indra, thou art the giver of 
cows, the giver of corn, the strong Lord of wealth ; the old 
guide of man, disappointing no desires, a friend to friends : to 
him we address this song. 

3. O, powerful Indra, achiever of many works, most brilliant 
god — all this wealth s known ,0 be thine alone ; take from it, 
conqueror, bring it nither ! lo not stint the desire of the wor- 
shipper who longs for thee ! 

4. On these days thou art gracious, and on these nights, 
keeping off the enemy from our cows and rom our stud. Tear- 
ing the fiend night after night with the help of Indra, let us 
rejoice in food, freed from haters. 

5. Let us rejoice, Indra, in the treasure and food, in wealth 
of manifold delight and splendor. Let us rejoice in the 
blessing of the gods, which gives us the strength of offspring, 
gives us cows first, and horses. 

6. The draughts inspired thee, O Lord of the brave ! these 
were vigor ; these libations in battles, when for the sake of the 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



poet, the sacrificer, thou strikest down irresistibly ten thousand 
enemies. 

7. From battle to battle thou advancest bravely, from town 
to town thou destroyest all this with might, when thou Indra, 
with Nami as thy friend, struckest down from afar the deceiver 
Namuki. 

8. Thou hast slain Karnaga and Parnaya with the brightest 
spear of Atithigon. Without a helper thou didst demolish the 
hundred cities of Vangrida, which were besieged by Rigisvan. 

****** 
11. We who in future, protected by the gods, wish to be 
thy most blessed friends, we praise thee ; blessed by thee with 
offspring and enjoying henceforth a longer life. 

Hymn to Agni. 

1. Agni, accept this log which I offer to thee, accept this 
my service ; listen well to these my songs. 

2. With this, O Agni, may we worship thee, thou son of 
strength, conqueror of horses ! and with this hymn, thou high- 
born ! 

3. May we thy servants serve thee with songs, O granter 
of riches, who lovest songs and delightest in riches. 

4. Thou Lord and giver of wealth, be thou wise and pow- 
erful ; drive away from us the enemies ! 

5. He gives us rain from heaven, he gives us inviolable 
strength, he gives us food a thousand fold. 

6. Youngest of the gods, their messenger, their invoker, 
most deserving of worship, come, at our praise, to him who 
worships thee and longs for thy help. 

7. For thou, O sage, goest wisely between these two crea- 
tions (heavens and earth, gods and men), like a friendly mes- 
senger between two hamlets. 

8. Thou art wise, and thou hast been pleased perform, 
thou intelligent Agni, the sacrifice without interruption. Sit 
down on this sacred grass ! 



I 2 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



Hymn to Ushas— The Dawn. 

1. She shines upon us like a young wife, rousing every 
living thing to do his work. When the fire had to be kindled 
by men, she made the light by striking down the darkness. 

2. She rose up, spreading far and wide and moving every- 
where. She grew in brightness, wearing her brilliant garment. 
The mother of the cows, the leader of the days. She shone 
gold-colored, lovely to behold. 

3. She, the fortunate, who brings the eye of the gods, who 
leads the white and lovely steed (of the sun), The Dawn was 
seen revealed by her rays, with brilliant treasures following 
every one. 

4. Thou art a blessing where thou art near, drive far away 
the unfriendly ; make the pastures wide, give us safety ! Scat- 
ter the enemy, bring riches ! Raise up wealth to the worshipper, 
thou mighty Dawn ! 

5. Shine for us with thy best rays, thou bright Dawn, thou 
who lengthenest our life, thou the love of all, who givest us 
food, who givest us wealth in cows, horses and chariots. 

Questions on the First Cause. 

Nor Aught nor Naught existed ; yon bright sky 

Was not, nor heaven's broad woof outstretched above. 

What covered all ? what sheltered ? what concealed ? 

Was it the water's fathomless abyss ? 

There was not death, yet there was naught immortal, 

There was no confine betwixt day and ni^ht ; 

The only One breathed breathless by itself, 

Other than It there nothing since has been. 

Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled 

In gloom profound — an ocean without light. 

The germ that still lay covered in the husk 

Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat. 

Then firs* came love upon it, the new spring 

Of mind — yea, poets in their hearts discerned, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



13 



Pondering, this bond between created things 
And uncreated. Comes this spark from earth, 
Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven ? 
Then seeds were sown, and mighty power arose — 
Nature below, and Power and Will above, — 
Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here, 
Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang ? 
The gods themselves came later into being, — 
Who knows from whence this great creation sprang ? 
He from whom all this great creation came, 
Whether his will created, or was mute, 
The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven, 
He knows it — or perchance even He knows not. 



Immortality and Responsibility. 
Extracts from different parts : 

He who gives alms goes to the highest place in heaven ; he 
goes to the gods. 

The kind mortal is greater than the great in heaven. 

Where there is eternal light, in the world where the sun is 
placed, in that immortal, imperishable world, place me, O 
Soma ! 

Where life is free, in the third heaven of heavens, where 
the worlds are radiant, there make me immortal ! 

Where wishes and desires are— where the bowl of the 
bright Soma is, where there is food and rejoicing, there make 
me immortal ! 

Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and 
pleasure reside, where the desires of our desire are attained, 
there make me immortal ! 

His path is easy, and without thorns, who does what is 
right. 

Let man fear Him who holds the four dice, before He 
throws them down (God who holds men's destinies in his 
hand) ; let no man delight in evil words. 



14 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



Prayer For Mercy and Repentance. 

1. Let me not yet, O Varuna, enter into the house of clay; 
have mercy, almighty, have mercy ! 

2. If we go along trembling, like a cloud driven by the 
wind, have mercy, almighty, have mercy. 

5. Whenever we, O, Varuna, commit an offense against the 
heavenly host, whenever we break the law through thoughtless- 
ness, punish us not O God, for that offence. 

(Or other hymns as follows :) 

Was it an old sin, O Varuna, that thou wishest to destroy 
thy friend who always praises thee ? 

Tell me, thou unconquerable lord, and I will quickly turn 
unto thee with praise, freed from sin. 

Absolve us from the sins of our fathers, and from those we 
have committed with our own bodies. Release Vasishtha, O, 
King, like a thief who has feasted on stolen oxen ; release him 
like a calf from the rope. 

It was not our doing, O Varuna ! it was necessity (or temp- 
tation), an intoxicating draught, passion, dice, thoughtlessness. 
The old is then to mislead the young; even sleep brings 
unrighteousness. 

Let me without sin, give satisfaction to the angry god, like 
a slave to his bounteous lord. 

The lord god enlighteneth the foolish ; he the wisest, leads 
his worshippers to wealth. 

Sun and moon go on in regular succession, that we may see 
Indra and believe. 

Thou Indra never findest a rich man to be thy friend ; 
wine-swillers despise thee. But when thou thunderest, when 
thou gatherest the clouds, then thou art called like a father. 

Hymn to Varuna. 

1. However we break thy laws from day to day, men as 
we are, O Varuna ! 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



J 5 



2. Do not deliver us unto death, nor to the blows of the 
furious, nor to the wrath of the spiteful ! 

3. To propitiate thee we unbend thy mind with songs, as 
the charioteer a weary steed. 

******* 

7. He who knows the place of the birds, who knows the 
ships on the waters. 

8. He, the upholder of order, who knows the twelve months 
with the offspring of each. * * He, the wise, sits down 
among his people to govern. * * He sees what has been, 
and what will be done. 

Yearning for Him, the far-seeing, my thoughts move onward? 
as kine move to their pastures. 



Hymn to Agni. 

t. Agni, who art immortal, and cognizant of all begotten 
things, bring from the dawn to the donor of the oblation wealth 
of many sorts, with an excellent habitation ; bring hither to-day 
the gods, awaking with the morning. 

2. For thou, Agni, art the accepted messenger of the gods, 
the bearer of oblations, the vehicle of sacrifices. 

3. We select to-day, Agni, the messenger, the giver of 
dwellings, the beloved of many, the smoke-bannered, the light- 
shedding, the protector of the worship of the worshipper at 
the break of day. 

4. I praise Agni at the break of day, the best and young- 
est (of the gods), the guest (of man), the universally invoked, 
who is friendly to the man that offers (oblations), who knows all 
that are born, that he may go (to bring) the other divinities. 

5. Agni, immortal sustainer of the universe, bearer of obla- 
tions, deserving of adoration, I will praise thee, who art exempt 
from death, the preserver, the sacrificer. 



i6 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



Hymn to Soma. 

Accepting this our sacrifice, and this our praise, approach 
Soma, and be to us as the augmenter of our rite. 

Acquainted with hymns, we elevate thee with praise. Do 
thou who art benignant approach. 

The experienced sage -commends the mortal who, through 
affection, divine Soma, praises thee. 

Protect us from calumny; preserve us from sin; pleased 
with our service, be our friend. 

May the milky juices flow around thee; may sacrificial offer- 
ings and vigor be concentrated in the destroyer of foes ; and, 
being duly nourished, do thou provide, Soma, excellent viands 
in heaven for our immortality. 

Prayer in Affliction. 

Where, Agni, is thy benevolence ? What new being now 
possesses it? Heaven and earth be conscious of this (my 
affliction.) 

Gods who are present in the three worlds, who abide in the 
light of the sun, where now is your truth ? Where the ancient 
invocation (that I have addressed) to you ? Heaven and earth 
be conscious of my affliction. 

I am he who formerly recited your praise when the libation 
was poured out, yet sorrows assail me like a wolf a thirsty 
deer. The ribs of the well close around me like the rival 
wives of one husband ; cares consume me, as a rat the weaver's 
thread. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



17 



FROM ATHARA VEDA. 



Divine Omnipresence. 

1. The great Lord of these worlds sees as if he were near. 
If a man thinks he is walking by stealth, the gods know it all. 

2. If a man stands, or walks, or hides, if he goes to lie 
down or get up ; what two people whisper together, King Va- 
runa knows it — he is there as a third. 

3. He who should flee far beyond the sky, even he would 
not be rid of Varuna, the King. His spies proceed from 
heaven towards this world ; with thousand eyes they overlook 
this earth. 

3. Varuna sees all this; what is between heaven and earth, 
and what is beyond. He has counted the twinkling of the 
eyes of men. As a player throws the dice he settles all things. 

The Divine in Man. 

They who know Brahman in man, they know the Highest. 
He who knows the Highest, and he who knows the lord of all 
creatures, and they who know the oldest Brahmana, they know 
the ground. 



FROM SAMA VEDA. 



Inspiration. 

O Indra, do thou, entertaining for us the affection a father 
does for his son, bring to us wisdom ; do thou, the object of 
worship to adoring multitudes, grant this sacrificial assembly of 
the gods, that we, the possessors of natural life, may obtain 
divine illumination. 



r8 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



Care and Power of Deity. 

Do not, O Indra, cast us off; thou art the only source of 
oul* delight, and of that of thousands of immortal beings ; thou 
art our protection, thy favor we must obtain. 

O, thunderbolt-wielding Indra, were there an hundred 
heavens and earths, and a thousand suns, and any other 
supposable creatures, they could not contain thee j for thou 
encirclest heaven and earth. 

Spirits of our Fathers. 

O, Indra and Agni; the footless Morn is advancing, out- 
stripping all the tribes of men, and even the Sun himself, with 
her silver tongue (bird-songs) and swift pace. 

Come close to us, O Indra, bringing with thee aids result 
ing from sacrifices to the spirits of the departed. Come, O 
most felicitous divinity, with those happy beings to whom we, 
in a special manner, offer oblations. 

Come, O, Great Father, along with the spirits of our 
fathers. 

Indra, who watches over the thousands of human beings, 
the intelligence of the wise, the all-glorious, the performer of 
many religious acts, the mighty hero, who knows the dwelling 
of the Morn, and sends forth the purifying, life-giving, clear, 
earth-born waters. 

Hymn to Agni. 

I praise, in this sacrifice, with an enkindling voice, the 
enkindled Agni. I urge forward him who is himself pure, and 
the purifier of others, and stable as the pole. I worship with 
delight-inspiring hymns, the possessor of wisdom, the inviter of 
the gods, who is extolled by multitudes and without malice ; 
the all-wise god, who is intimately acquainted with every living 
creature. O, Agni, gods and men have consecrated thee, age 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



I 9 



after age, as the herald of the gods, the immortal, the offerer of 
oblations, the preserver, the god who ought to be extolled, and 
have worshipped thee as the ever-wakeful, the all-pervading, 
and the lord of men. 

O, Agni, who renderest glorious both worlds during the 
performance of our rites, thou goest backward and forward 
through the two worlds as the messenger of the gods ; since 
therefore we apply ourselves to the sacred rites and sacred 
hymns, be thou manifested as the prosperer of the three habitable 
regions (of earth, air, and heaven.) 

Prayer to the Triune Divinity. 

May we, who propitiate the gods, arrive at the age laid 
down by the divinity with undiminished mental and bodily 
vigor. 

May Indra, served with sacrificial viands, grant us pros- 
perity. May the nourishing Sun, who knows all things, grant 
us prosperity. 

May Tarkshya Rishi, the ring of whose chariot-wheel could 
not be cut, grant us prosperity. (O, triune divinity !) May 
Vrihuspati grant us prosperity. Triune divinity ! grant us pros- 
perity. 

Vedas.* 

Any place where the mind of man can be undisturbed, is 
suitable for the worship of the Supreme Being. 

The vulgar look for their gods in water ; the ignorant think 
they reside in wood, bricks, and stones ; men of more extended 
knowledge seek them in celestial orbs ; but wise men worship 
the Universal Soul. 

There is one living and true God ; everlasting, without 
parts or passion ; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness ; 
the Maker and Preserver of all things. 

* From Progress of Religious Ideas, by Mrs. L. M. Childs. 



20 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



He overspreads all creatures. He is entirely Spirit, with- 
out the form either of a minute body, or an extended one, 
which is liable to impression or organization. He is the ruler 
of the intellect, self-existent, pure, perfect, omniscient, and 
omnipresent. He has from all eternity been assigning to all 
creatures their respective purposes. No vision can approach 
him, no language describe him, no intellectual power can com- 
prehend him. 

As a thousand rays emanate from one flame, thus do all 
souls emanate from The One Eternal Soul, and return to him # 

The Supreme Soul dwells in the form of four-footed ani- 
mals, and in another place he is full of glory. He lives in the 
form of the slave, he is smaller than the grain of barley. He 
is smallest of the small, and the greatest of the great ; yet he 
is neither small nor great. 

Without hand nor foot, he runs rapidly and grasps firmly ; 
without eyes, he sees all; without ears, he hears all. He 
knows whatever can be known; but there is none who knows 
him. The wise call him the Great, Supreme, Pervading Spirit. 

He who considers all beings as existing in the Supreme 
Spirit, and the Supreme Spirit as pervading all beings, cannot 
view with contempt any creature whatsoever. 

This body, formed of bones, skin, and nerves, filled with 
fat and flesh, is a great evil, and without reality. It ought to 
perish. Of what use is it then for the soul to seek corporeal > 
pleasures ? 

Through strict veracity, universal control of the mind and 
senses, abstinence from sexual indulgence, and ideas derived 
from spiritual teachers, man should approach God, who, full of 
glory and perfection, works in the heart, and to whom only 
votaries freed from passion and desire can approximate. 

May this soul of mine, which is a ray of perfect wisdom, 
pure intellect, and permanent existence, which is the unex- 
tinguishable light fixed within created bodies, without which 
no good act is performed, be united by devout meditations 
with the Spirit supremely blest and supremely intelligent. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



21 



That All-pervading Spirit, which gives light to the visible 
Sun, even the same in kind am I, though infinitely distant in 
degree. Let my soul return to the immortal Spirit of God, 
and then let my body return to dust. 

By one Supreme Ruler is this universe pervaded ; even 
every world in the whole circle of Nature. Enjoy pure delight, 
O man, by abandoning all thoughts of this perishable world ; 
and covet not the wealth of any creature existing. 

God, who is perfect wisdom and perfect happiness, is the 
final refuge of the man who has liberally bestowed his wealth, 
who has been firm in virtue, and who knows and adores the 
Great One. 

The way to eternal beatitude is open to him who with- 
out omission speaketh truth. 

If any one assumes the garb of the religious, without 
doing their works, he is not religious. Whatever garments he 
wears, if his works are pure, he belongs to the order of pure 
men. If he wears the dress of a penitent, and does not lead 
the life of a penitent, he belongs to the men of the world ; 
but if he is in the world, and practices penitential works, he 
ought to. be regarded as a penitent. 

Saints wise and firm, exempt from passion, assured of the 
soul's divine origin, satisfied solely with the science of God, 
have seen God everywhere present with them, and after death 
have been absorbed in him. 

To know that God is, and that all is God, this is the sub- 
stance of the Vedas. When one attains to this, there is no 
more need of reading, or of works ; they are but the bark, the 
straw, the envelope. No more need of them when one has 
the seed, the substance, the Creator. When one knows Him 
by science, he may abandon science, as the torch which has 
conducted him to the end. 



2 2 



GHAPTERS FROM THE 



FROM BHAGVAT GEETA. 



Immortality. 
Kreeshna to Arjoun: 

I, myself, never was not, nor thou, nor all the princes of 
the earth ; nor shall we ever cease to be. As the soul in this 
mortal frame findeth infancy, youth and old age ; so, in some 
future frame will it find the like. One who is confirmed in this 
belief is not disturbed by anything that may come to pass. 
The sensibility of the faculties giveth heat and cold, pleasure 
and pain, which come and go, and are transient and inconstant. 
Bear them with patience, O Son of Bharat, for the wise man, 
whom these disturb not, is formed for immortality. * * * 

As a man throweth away old garments, and putteth on new, 
even so the soul, having quitted its old mortal frames, entereth 
others which are new. The weapon divideth it not, the fire 
burneth it not, the water corrupteth it not, the wind drieth it 
not away ; for it is indivisible, inconsumable, incorruptible ; it 
is eternal, universal, permanent, immovable ; it is invisible, 
inconceivable and unalterable; therefore, believing it to be 
thus, thou shouldst not grieve. * * * 

Wise men, who have abandoned all thought of the fruit 
which is produced by their actions, are freed from the chains 
of birth, and go to the regions of eternal happiness. 

Incarnation. 

Although I (Kreeshna) am not, in my nature, subject to 
birth or decay, and am lord of all created beings • yet having 
command over my own nature, I am made evident by my own 
power ; and as often as there is a decline of virtue, and an 
insurrection of vice and injustice, in the world, I make myself 
evident ; and thus I appear from age to age, for the preserva- 
tion of the just, the destruction of the wicked, and the estab- 
lishment of virtue. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



23 



Of Works, and a Recluse Life. 

Arjoun : Thou speakest, O Kreeshna, of the forsaking of 
works, and again of performing them. Tell me which of the 
two is best. 

Kreeshna : Both the desertion and the practice of works 
are equally the means of happiness ; but of the two, the prac- 
tice is to be distinguished above the desertion. The perpetual 
recluse, who neither longeth nor complaineth, is worthy to be 
known, free from duplicity, and happily freed from the bond 
of action. 

Children only, and not the learned, speak of the specula- 
tive and practical doctrines as two. They are but one, for 
both obtain the self-same end. To be a Sanyassee (or recluse) 
without application, is to obtain pain and trouble ; whilst the 
Monee, who is employed in the practice of his duty, presently 
obtaineth Brahm the Almighty. The man who, employed 
in the practice of works, is of a purifi ed soul, a subdued spirit, 
and restrained passions, and whose soul is the universal soul, 
is not affected by so being (employed). * * * 

The man who, performing the duties of life, and quitting 
all interest in them, placeth them upon Brahm, the Supreme, is 
not tainted by sin ; but remaineth like the leaf of the lotus, 
unaffected by the waters. Practical men, who perform the 
offices of life but with their bodies, their minds, their under- 
standings and their senses, and forsake the consequences for 
the purification of their souls, and, although employed, forsake 
the fruit of action, obtain infinite happiness ; whilst the man 
who is unemployed, being attached to the fruit by the agent 
(active) desire, is in the bonds of confinement. The man who 
hath his passions in subjection, and with his mind forsaketh 
all works, his soul sitteth at rest in the nine-gate city of its 
abode (in his body), neither acting nor causing to act. * 

The duties of a man's own particular calling, although not 
free from faults, are far preferable to the duty of another, let 
it be ever so well pursued. 



24 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



A man by following the duties which are appointed by his 
birth, doeth no wrong. A man's own calling, with all its faults, 
ought not to be forsaken. Every undertaking is involved in 
its faults, as the fire in its smoke. * * * A man 
also being engaged in every work, if he put his trust in me 
alone shall, by my divine pleasure, obtain the eternal and 
incorruptible mansions of my abode. 

The Brahm. 

Those whose understandings are in the Deity, whose souls 
are in him, whose confidence is in him, are purified by wisdom 
from all their offenses, and go from whence they shall never 
return. 

The learned behold Deity alike in the revered Brahmin, 
perfected in knowledge, in the ox, the elephant, the dog, and 
him who eateth the flesh of dogs. Those whose minds are 
fixed on this quality, gain eternity, even in this world. They 
put their trust in Brahm, the Eternal, because he is everywhere 
without fault. 

The man who knoweth, and confideth in, Brahm, and whose 
steady mind is free from folly, should neither rejoice in pros- 
perity, nor complain in adversity. Such an one, whose soul is 
fixed upon the study of Brahm, enjoyeth pleasure without 
decline. The enjoyments which proceed from the feelings are 
the wombs of future pain. The wise man, acquainted with 
the beginning and the end (or consequence) of things, delight- 
eth not in the.3e. 

He who can bear up against the violence produced from lust 
and anger in this mortal life, is properly employed, and a happy 
man. The man happy in his heart, at rest in his mind, and 
enlightened within, is a Yogee, or one devoted to God, and of 
a godly spirit ; and obtaineth the immaterial nature of Brahm, 
the Supreme. Such Rishis (Saints) as are purified from their 
offenses, freed from doubt, of subdued mind, and interested 
in the good of all mankind, obtain the incorporeal Brahm. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



25 



The incorporeal Brahm is prepared from the beginning, 
for such as are free from lust and anger, of humble minds and 
subdued spirits, and who are acquainted with their own souls. 

Brahm — The Universal Spirit. 

I am the sacrifice ; I am the worship ; I am the spices ; I 
am the invocation ; I am the ceremony to the manes (spirits) 
of the ancestors ; I am the provisions ; I am the fire, and I 
am the victim; I am the father and mother of the world, 
the grandsire and preserver. I am the Holy One, worthy to 
be known; the mystic figure Aum; the Rig, the San, and 
Yajoor Veds. 

I am the journey of the good; the comforter; the creator; 
the witness ; the resting place ; the asylum, and the friend. I 
am generation and dissolution, the place where all things are 
reposited, and the inexhaustible seed of all nature. I am sun- 
shine, and I am rain ; I now draw in and now let forth. I 
am death and immortality ; I am entity and nonentity. * * 

They who serve other gods, with a firm belief, in doing 
so involuntarily worship even me. I am he who partaketh of 
all worship, and I am their reward. * * * 

I am the soul which standeth in the bodies of all beings. 
I am the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things. 

* * * I am among worships the silent worship, 
and amongst immovables the mountain Himmalaya. Of all 
science, I am the knowledge of the ruling spirit, and of all 
speaking, I am the oration. I am also never-failing time, the 
preserver, whose face is turned on all sides. I am all-grasping 
death, and I am the resurrection of those about to be. Among 
feminines I am fame, fortune, eloquence, memory, understand- 
ing, fortitude, patience. * * * I am the seed of 
all in nature, not anything animate or inanimate is without 
me. My divine distinctions are without end. * * * I 
planted this whole universe with a single portion (motion) and 
then stood still. 
3 



26 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



The Good Man — or Devotee. 

Kreeshna said : He, my servant, is dear unto me, who is 
free from enmity, the friend of all nature, merciful, exempt 
from all pride and selfishness, the same in pain and pleasure, 
patient of wrong, contented, constantly devout, of subdued 
passions, and firm resolves, and whose mind and understand- 
ing are fixed on me alone. He also is my beloved of whom 
mankind are not afraid, and who is not afraid of mankind ; 
and who is free from the influence of joy, impatience, and the 
dread of harm. He, my servant, is dear unto me who is unex- 
pecting, just and pure, impartial, free from distraction of mind, 
and who hath forsaken every enterprise. He also is worthy of 
my love, who neither rejoiceth nor findeth fault ; who neither 
lamenteth nor coveteth, and, being my servant, hath forsaken 
both good and evil fortune. He also is my beloved servant, 
who is the same in friendship and in hatred, in honor and in 
dishonor, in cold and heat, in pain and pleasure ; who is unso- 
licitous about the event of things ; to whom praise and blame 
are as one ; who is of little speech, and pleased with whatever 
cometh to pass ; who owneth no particular home, and who is 
of a steady mind. 



Divine Destiny — Absorption in the Divine Nature. 

Kreeshna said : The man born to divine destiny is endued 
with the following qualities : exemption from fear, a purity of 
heart, a constant attention to the discipline of his understand- 
ing ; charity, self-restraint, religion, study, penance, rectitude, 
freedom from doing wrong, veracity, freedom from anger, resig- 
nation, temperance, freedom from slander, universal compassion, 
exemption from the desire of slaughter, mildness, modesty, 
discretion, dignity, patience, fortitude, chastity, unrevengeful- 
ness, and freedom from vain-glory : whilst those who come 
into life under the influence of the evil destiny, are distinguished 
by pride, hypocrisy, presumption, anger, harshness of speech, 



BIBLK OF THE AGES. 



27 



and ignorance. The divine destiny is for Moksh, or eternal 
absorption into the divine nature ; and the evil destiny con- 
fineth the soul to mortal birth. 



FROM CODE AND LAWS OF MENU. 



Moral Duties — The Soul its own Witness. 

To patriarchs, to deities, and to mankind, the scripture is 
an eye giving constant light. The Veda Shastra could not 
be made by human faculties, nor can it be measured by human 
reason. 

The birth which man derives from his parents is merely 
human; that which the Vedas procure for him is the true 
birth, exempt from age or death. 

To a man contaminated by sensuality, neither the V edas, 
nor liberality, nor sacrifices, nor strict observances, nor pious 
austerities, will produce felicity. 

A wise man faithfully discharges all moral duties, even 
though he does not constantly perform the ceremonies of 
religion. He will fall very low if he performs ceremonies only, 
and fails to discharge his moral duties. 

By honoring his father, mother, and sister, a man effectu- 
ally does whatever ought to be done. This is the highest 
duty, and every other is subordinate. All duties are performed 
by him who completely honors these three; but to him by 
whom they are dishonored, all other acts are fruitless. 

Whatever oblations a man, actuated by strong faith, piously 
offers, as the sacred laws have directed, become a perpetual, 
imperishable gratification to his ancestors in the other world. 

He whose sins are mostly corporeal, will assume, after 
death, a vegetable or mineral form; for sins mostly verbal he 
will assume the form of bird or beast ; for sins merely mental 
he will assume a human form, but in some of its lower con- 



2 8 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



ditions. An unauthorized teacher of the Sacred Books will 
return into a dumb body. 

If a wife speak unkindly to her husband, she may be 
superseded by another, at once. A woman is never fit for 
independence. 

The sacrifice required of Brahmins is to gain knowledge 
and instruct others ; of the Cshatriyas, that they protect others ; 
of the Vaisyas, that they supply the wants of commerce ; of 
the Soodras, that they serve others. 

Like a tree carried far from the river which saw its birth, 
like a bird that flies from the branch on which it rested, man 
ought to free himself from the body ; for thus will he see him- 
self delivered from the devouring monster of this world. 

The soul itself is its own witness, and its own refuge. 
Offend not thy conscious soul, the supreme internal witness of 
men ! Oh, friend to virtue ! that Supreme Spirit which thou 
believest one and the same with thyself, resides in thy bosom 
perpetually, and is an all-knowing inspector of thy goodness, 
or wickedness. 

The priest, baptising the child, says : " Little babe, thou 
enterest the world weeping, while all around thee smile. 
Mayest thou so live that thou mayest depart in smiles, while 
all around thee weep." 

On Creation. 

The universe existed in darkness imperceptible, undefinable, 
undiscoverable, and undiscovered ; as if immersed in sleep. 

Then the self-existing power, undiscovered himself, but 
making the world discernible with the five elements and other 
principles, appeared in undiminished glory dispelling the 
gloom. 

He whom the mind alone can perceive, whose essence 
eludes the external organs, who has no visible parts, who 
exists from eternity, even he, the soul of things, shows forth in 
person. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



29 



He, having willed to produce various beings from his own 
divine substance, first created the waters, with a thought, and 
placed in them a productive seed. 

The seed became an egg, bright as gold, blazing like the 
luminary with a thousand beams, and in that egg he was born 
himself, in the form of Brahma, the great forefather of all 
spirits. 

The waters are called Nara, because they were the pro- 
duction of Nara, or the Spirit of God ; and hence they were 
his first ayana, or place of motion ; he hence is named Nara- 
yana, or moving of the waters. 

In that egg the great power sat inactive a whole year of the 
creator, at the end of which, by his thought alone, he caused 
the egg to divide itself. 

And from its two divisions he framed the heavens above, 
and the earth beneath ; in the midst he placed the subtle ether, 
the eight regions, and the permanent receptacle of the waters. 

From the Supreme Soul he drew forth mind, existing sub- 
stantially, though unperceived by sense, immaterial ; and before 
mind, or the reasoning power, he produced consciousness, the 
internal monitor, the ruler. 

And before them both he produced the great principle of 
the soul, or first expansion of the divine idea ; and all vital 
forms endued with the three qualities of goodness, passion, 
and darkness, and the five perceptions of sense, and the five 
organs of sensation. 

That, having at once pervaded with emanations from the 
Supreme Spirit, the minutest portions of fixed principles im- 
mensely operative, consciousness, and the five perceptions, he 
formed all creatures. 

Thence proceed the great elements, endued with peculiar 
powers, and mind with operations infinitely subtle, the imperish- 
able cause of all apparent forms. 

This universe, therefore, is compacted from the minute 
portions of those seven divine and active jDrinciples ; the great 



5° 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



soul or first emanation, consciousness, and five perceptions ; 
a mutable universe Jrom immutable ideas. 

Of created things, the most excellent are those who are 
animated ; of the animated, those which subsist by intelli- 
gence; of the intelligent, mankind; and of men, the sacerdotal 
class. Of priests, those eminent in learning ; of the learned, 
those who know their duty ; of those who know it, such as 
virtuously perform it ; and of the virtuous, those who seek 
beatitude from a perfect acquaintance with scriptural doctrines. 

»jC ^ 5fC 

Let every Brahman, with fixed attention, consider all nature 
as existing in the Divine Spirit ; all worlds as seated in him ; 
he alone as the whole assemblage of gods ; and he as the 
author of all human actions. 

Let him consider the Supreme omnipresent intelligence as 
the sovereign lord of the universe, by whom alone it exists, an 
incomprehensible spirit ; pervading all beings in five elemental 
forms, and causing them to pass through birth, growth, and 
decay, and so revolve like the wheels of a car. 

Thus, the man who perceives in his own soul the Supreme 
Soul present in all creatures, acquires equanimity toward them 
all, and shall be absolved at last in the highest essence, even 
that of the Almighty himself. 

The only firm friend, who follows men even after death, is 
Justice ; all others are extinct with the body. 

Food, eaten constantly with respect, gives muscular force 
and generative power ; but eaten irreverently, destroys them 
both. 

Bodies are cleansed by water; the mind is purified by 
truth ; the vital spirit, by theology and devotion ; the under- 
standing, by clear knowledge. 

O friend to virtue, that supreme spirit — which thou believest 
one and the same with thyself — resides in thy bosom perpet- 
ually ; and is an all-knowing inspector of thy goodness or of 
thy wickedness. 

Justice, being destroyed, will destroy; being preserved, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



31 



will preserve ; it must therefore never be violated. Beware, O 
judge, lest justice, being overturned, overturn both us and 
thyself. 

Injustice, committed in this world, produces not fruit imme- 
diately, but, like the earth, in due season ; and advancing by 
little and little, it eradicates the man who committed it. 

Iniquity, once committed, fails not of producing fruit to 
him who wrought it ; if not in his own person, yet in his sons ; 
or, if not in his sons, yet in his grandsons. 

He grows rich for a while through unrighteousness ; but he - 
perishes at length from his whole root upwards. 

The Brahmo-Somaj — or Church of the True God, 
A. D., 1870. 

This modern church and reformation of Hinduism is based 
on no specifically revealed religion, but on the natural laws of 
the universe and the natural intuitions of the human soul. 
The Brahmo-Somaj has its origin, so far as its origin can be 
traced externally, forty years ago in the life and labors of Ram- 
mohun Roy. That great and noble man, convinced that the 
popular idolatries and superstitions of Hinduism did not belong 
to the real religion in its original form, established a little church 
in Calcutta for the simple worship of the Supreme Being, unen- 
cumbered by any of the prevalent beliefs and practices. He 
based this movement on the authority of the old Vedas, claim- 
ing, doubtless with truth, that their doctrines were pure theism. 
Yet he invited " all sorts and descriptions of people, without 
distinction/' to join the movement, and tried to make it so 
catholic that all persons of monotheistic faith might be at home 
in it, whether they were Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, 
or Jews. Practically, however, the church remained a Hindu 
Unitarian Church. But about twenty years ago this platform 
of the specific divine authority of the Vedas was abandoned, 
and the Brahmo-Somaj took for a basis of faith, " God's rev 
elation in nature and the religious instincts of man. '' And there 



3^ 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



is where the the Brahmo-Somaj stands to-day. As its present 
great representative man, Keshub Chunder Sen, says, " It is an 
organized theistic church, Indian in its origin, but universal in 
its scope, which aims to destroy idolatry, superstition, and sec- 
tarianism, and propagate the saving truths of absolute religion, 
and the spiritual worship of the one true God, and likewise 
to promote the intellectual, moral, and social reformation of 
individuals and nations, and thus make theism the religion of 
life." 

And since the day that the Bramo-Somaj took this stand 
on nature and the soul, it has made great advance. Two years 
ago it counted more than sixty churches in different parts of 
India, and the number has increased since that faster than 
before. Its adherents cannot be accurately reckoned in num- 
bers, because they keep no regular record of membership; but 
it counts many thousands of members, and many Hindus of 
great influence, which is beginning to be felt in all the civil and 
social, as well as religious life of India. They have a most 
devout sense of religious consecration to their work, are self- 
sacrificing, heroic, and — though in a perfectly peaceful way — 
aggressive. They believe in actively propagating their faith, 
and the movement has something of the zealous missionary 
spirit in which Buddhism began. There is a fervor about them 
which reminds one of Methodism. Yet their faith is eminently 
practical, too. They are engaged in all good reforms ; they 
are fighting vigorously against caste, and for civil, social, and 
religious equality; they are laboring for the education of 
woman; they are especially bent on removing the oppressive laws 
and traditions which forbid intermarriage between persons of 
different castes, and the re-marriage of widows ; and generally 
they are alive to all good works of charity, philanthropy, and 
advancing civilization. 

Now it would not be true to say that no part of this 
religious reformation is due to the influence of Christianity. 
The Bramo-Somaj itself confesses its indebtedness to the 
Christian religion. Its members are well acquainted with the 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



33 



Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, and highly appreciate the 
character and teachings of Jesus. But this influence of Chris- 
tianity has been indirect. The dogmas which the Christian 
missionaries have generally taught as Christianity, the members 
of the Brahmo-Somaj utterly reject. They deny that Chris- 
tianity has any specific authority as a divine revelation above 
that of other religions, and of course do not call themselves 
Christians. They accept what is true in the Bible and in the 
teachings of Jesus, just as they accept what is true in the Vedas 
and in the prophets of India, because it commends itself to 
their reason and intuition, and not because any book or prophet 
has uttered it. In fact the Brahmo-Somaj, the product of many 
religious and social forces, is an excellent illustration of the 
historic method by which it seems altogether probable that the 
various religions of the earth are to affect and modify each 
other. 

It is especially easy to trace in the teachings of the Brahmo- 
Somaj the influence of the liberal schools of theology in 
England, and of our own Theodore Parker. That stanch 
reformer, who struck such vigorous blows here in Boston, and 
whose body, burned out with the intensity of the life it carried, 
sank at its noon to rest in the beautiful soil of Italy, is now 
having his resurrection all round the globe. We hear of him 
not only through the United States and in England, but in all 
parts of Europe from Norway to Austria, in South America, in 
India, and even in such outlying regions of civilization as 
Australia and Southern Africa. He, at least, is one of the 
god-fathers of the Brahmo-Somaj.— ?/ 7 ". J. Potter, New Bed- 
ford, Mass. 

Keshub Chunder Sen, a leading preacher of the Brahmo- 
Somaj, writes to his English friends, on his return from England 
to Hindostan, from Egypt, October, 1870, as follows : 

" Indeed the world is moving onward to the consumma- 
tion of that universal Church which owns no other creed except 
the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man. The 
history of the past points to it — the present age demands it \ 



34 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



everywhere there arc cheering indications of its dawning light. 
It is God's will that it should come. Let his will be done. 
Let us all unite to uprear his true Church. Let each nation 
come with all the elements of truth and goodness in its sacred 
history, and all that is pure and divine in its national life. No 
nation, no sect, ought to be excluded, for through each, God 
has spoken, and in each some form of truth is deposited in 
the flow of ages. Bring with you English brethren, your noble 
charities, your industry and earnestness, and your respect for 
science — that glorious and perpetual revelation of God to man. 
Come, liberal minded children of America, with your world of 
modern thought and civilization, and your youthful freshness 
of mind and soul. Come, all yc nations of the West, with all 
the riches of truth ye possess. But the circle is not yet com- 
plete. Let the nations of the East come, with their ancient 
civilization, their sublime devotion, fervent faith and deep spir- 
ituality; let them come with the precious inheritance of 
thought and sentiment bequeathed by their venerable ances- 
tors. Let the East come clad in the golden robe of morn- 
ing light. Then the circle of universal religion will be 
completed. Thus shall the Scriptures of science in the West, 
and the Scriptures of inspiration in the East, constitute 
together the Word of God. Thus shall the "mind and 
strength" of the one, and the 'heart and soul' of the other, 
join in the service of God. Thus shall the spirit of charity, 
which ' went about doing all manner of good/ and the spirit 
of devotion, which 'went to the mountains to pray,' blend 
together, and form the unity of divine life in man. Thus shall 
all sects and races and nations in the world unite to form the 
catholic church of God, limbs of one body supported by the 
same vitality, and doing the work of the same Master ; a harp 
of many strings playing harmoniously, and with their blended 
notes making sweet music in praise of the Great Ruler. " 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



35 



CHAPTER II. 



BUDDHISM.* 



HINDOSTAN, BURMAH, CHINA> &c. 



The Five Buddhist Commandments. 

1. Not to destroy life. 

2. Not to obtain another's property by unjust means. 

3. Not to indulge the passions, so as to invade the legal or 
natural rights of other men. 

4. Not to tell lies. 

5. Not to partake of anything intoxicating. 

Overcome Evil with Good. 

Buddha said : A man who foolishly does me wrong ( or 
regards me as being or doing wrong), I will return to him the 
protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil goes from him, 
the more good shall go from me. The fragrance of these good 
actions always redounding to me, the harm of the slanderer's 
words returning to him. 

A foolish man once heard Buddha, in preaching, defend 
this great principle of returning good for evil, and therefore 
came and abused him. Buddha was silent, pitying his mad 
folly. The man having finished his abuse, Buddha said : 
" Son, when a man forgets the rules of politeness in making a 
present to another, the custom is to say : ' Keep your present.' 
Son ! you have railed at me ! I decline to entertain your 
abuse ! and ask you to keep it, a source of misery to yourself. 
For, as sound belongs to the drum, and shadow to the sub- 

* See Appendix B, for notes. 



36 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



stance, so in the end misery will certainly overtaKe the evil 
doer. ,;; 

Buddha said : A wicked man who reproaches a virtuous one, 
is like a man who looks up and spits at Heaven • the spittle 
soils not Heaven, but comes back and defiles his own person. 

Again: He is like one who flings dirt at another against the 
wind — the dirt does but return on him who threw it. The vir- 
tuous man cannot be hurt — the misery that the other would 
inflict comes back on himself. 

Who is a Good Man? 

Buddha said : Who is the good man ? The religious man 
only is good. And what is goodness ? First and foremost, it 
is the agreement of the will with the conscience (reason). Who 
is the great man? He who is strongest in the exercise of 
patience, who patiently endures injury and maintains a blame- 
less life ; he is a man indeed ! And who is a worshipful man 
(one deserving reverence, or a Buddha) ? A man whose heart 
has arrived at the highest degree of enlightenment All dust 
removed, all wicked actions uprooted, all within calm and pure, 
without blemish, who is acquainted with all things from first or 
last, and even with those things that have not yet transpired ; 
who knows and sees and hears all things; such universal wisdom 
is rightly called " illumination." 

Spiritual Culture — Illumination. 

Buddha said : A man who cherishes lust and desire, and 
does not aim after supreme knowledge, is like a vase of dirty 
water, in which all sorts of beautiful objects are placed — the 
water b3ing shaken up men can see nothing of the beautiful 
objects therein placed ; so lust and desire, causing confusion 
and disorder in the heart, are like the mud in the water — they 
prevent our seeing the beauty of supreme reason (religion). But 
if a man, by the gradual process of confession and penance, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



37 



comes near to the acquirement of knowledge, then, the mud 
in the water being removed, all is clear and pure ; remove 
the pollution, and immediately, of itself, comes forth the 
substantial form. So the three poisons (covetousness, anger, 
delusion) which rage within the heart, and the five obscurities 
(envy, passion, sloth, vacillation, unbelief) which embrace it, 
effectually prevent one from attaining supreme reason. But 
once get rid of the pollution of the heart, and then we perceive 
the spiritual portion of ourselves, which we have had from the 
first, although involved in the net of life and death. Gladly 
then we mount to the Paradise of all the Buddhas, where 
reason and virtue continually abide. 

A man who devotes himself to religion is like one who takes 
a lighted torch to a dark house ; the darkness is dissipated ! 
Persevere in the search after wisdom, and obtain knowledge 
and truth ; error and delusion rooted out, what perfect illumina- 
tion will there be ! 

In reflection, in life, in conversation, in study, I never for 
a moment forget the supreme end — Religion. 

"Bodhi" — Supreme Reason. 

Buddha said : The Shaman who has left his home, banished 
desire, expelled love, fathomed the bottom of his own heart, 
penetrated the deep principles of universal mind (Buddha) ; 
understood the principle that there is no subjective personal 
existence, or objective aim in life, or result to be obtained; 
whose heart is neither hampered by the practice of religion, or 
fettered by the bonds of life ; without anxious thought, without 
active endeavor, without careful preparation, without success- 
ful accomplishment, attaining the highest possible point of true 
being, without passing through any successive and distinct 
stages of progress; this is indeed "to be religious" (or to 
attain or practice Bodhi, i. e., Supreme Reason). 



38 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



Twenty Difficult Things. 

Buddha said : There are twenty difficult things in the 
world : being poor, to be charitable ; being rich and great, to 
be religious; to escape destiny; to get sight (or understand- 
ing) of the Scriptures ; to be born when a Buddha is in the 
world ; to repress lust and banish desire ; to see an agreeable 
object and not seek to obtain it ; to be strong without being 
rash (or, having power, not to be proud) ; to bear insult with- 
out anger ; to move in the world without setting the heart on 
it ; to investigate a matter to the very bottom ; not to contemn 
the ignorant ; thoroughly to extirpate self-esteem ; to be good, 
and at the same time learnecf and clever (or sagacious) ; to see 
the hidden principles in the profession of Religion ; to attain 
one's end without exultation ; to show, in the right way, the 
doctrine of expediency to save men by converting them ; to 
be the same in heart and life ; to avoid controversy. 



Illumination — Clairvoyance. 

At this time Ananda and all the great congregation, grate- 
fully attentive to the words of Buddha Tathagata, as he opened 
the abstruse points of his argument, their bodies and minds 
worn out with exertion, they obtained illumination. This 
great assembly perceived that each one's heart was co-extensive 
with the universe, seeing clearly the empty character of the 
universe as plainly as a leaf or trifling thing in the hand, and 
that all things in the universe are all alike, merely the excel- 
lently bright and primeval heart of Bodhi, and that this heart is 
universally diffused, and comprehends all things within itself. 

And still reflecting, they beheld their generated bodies, as 
so many grains of dust in the wide expanse of the universal 
void, now safe, now lost ; or as a bubble of the sea, sprung 
from nothing and born to be destroyed. But their perfect and 
independent soul not to ba destroyed, but ever the same ; iden- 
tical with the substance of Buddha ; incapable of increase or 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



59 



diminution. And thus, standing before Tathagata, they uttered 
these verses of commendation, in praise of his august presence : 

O ! the mysterious depth, the all-embracing extent, the 
undisturbed and unmoved Majesty ! 

O ! that we now might obtain the fruit, and perfect the 
Royal Treasure (of Nirvana) ; and yet be the means of con- 
verting endless worlds of beings, and causing them to experience 
this same deep heart of gratitude through endless worlds ! 

Thus would we return the boundless love of Buddha, and 
so humbly seek the illuminating energy of the world. Hon- 
ored, passing through the various worlds, we would rescue the 
countless beings yet immersed in sin, and in the end with 
them find rest. 

Gathas, or Hymns of Buddhist Priests. 

[From the Daily Manual of Shaman, in the Pratimoksha.] 

On putting on the clothes : 

Assuming this my upper robe, 
I pray that every living soul, 
Obtaining the most perfect principle, 
May reach the other shore of life. 

Assuming this my under robe, 
I pray that every living soul, 
Attaining every virtuous principle, 
May perfect himself in true penitence. 

On binding on my sash, I pray 

That every living soul may closely bind 

Each virtuous principle around himself. 

On walking so as not to crush an insect, say : 
As thus I walk upon my feet, 
I pray that every living soul, 
Emerging from the sea of life and death, 
May soon attain the fulness of the Law. 



4° 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



On washing the face, say : 

As thus I wash my face, I pray 
That every living soul may gain 
Religious knowledge, which admits 
Of no defilement through eternity. 

On bowing down before Buddha, say : 

King of the Law, the most exalted Lord, 
Unequalled through the three-fold world, 
Teacher and guide of gods and men, 
Our loving Father, and of all that breathes, 
I bow myself in lowest reverence, and pray. 

Sin and Repentance. 
Doing what we ought not to do, 
Not doing what we ought to do, 
The fire of regretful sorrow which burns 
In after ages (leads to) ruin and misery. 
But if a man is able to repent of his sin, 
And to complete his repentance, there is no more grief. 
In this way the heart is restored to peace ; 
But repentance not fulfilled, there is the constant recollection 
of sin, 

Whether of omission or commission, 

And this is just the condition of the fool ; 

Not repenting with all his heart, 

Not doing what he is able to do, 

He completes the sum of his evil deeds, 

And he cannot but do that which he ought not. 



THE DHAMMAPADA— OR PATH OF VIRTUE. 
By Buddha. 

Thought. 

All that we are is the result of what we have thought ; it is 
founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



41 



man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as 
the wheel follows the foot of him who draws the carriage. 

All that we are is the result of what we have thought ; it is 
founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a 
man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him 
like a shadow that never leaves him. 

As a fetcher makes straight his arrow, a wise man makes 
straight his trembling and unsteady thought, which is difficult 
to keep, difficult to turn. 

Let the wise man guard his thoughts, for they are difficult 
to perceive, very artful, and rush wherever they list ; thoughts 
well guarded bring happiness. 

Those who bridle their mind, which travels far, moves about 
alone, is without a body, and hides in the chamber (of the 
heart), will be free from the bonds of Mara (the tempter). 

He who lives looking for pleasure only, his senses uncon- 
trolled, immoderate in his enjoyments, idle and weak, Mara 
(the tempter) will certainly overcome him, as the wind blows 
down a weak tree. 

He who lives without looking for pleasures, his senses well 
controlled, his enjoyments moderate, who is faithful and strong, 
Mara will certainly not overcome him, any more than the wind 
overthrows a rocky mountain. 

As rain breaks through an ill-thatched house, passion will 
break through an unreflecting mind. 

As rain does not break through a well-thatched house, 
passion will not break through a well-reflecting mind. 

The virtuous man delights in this world, and he delights in 
the next. He delights, he rejoices, when he sees the purity of 
his own work. 

The evil doer suffers in this world, and he suffers in the 
next. He suffers when he thinks of the evil he has done ; he 
suffers more when going in the evil path. 

The thoughtless man, even if he can recite a large portion 
(of the law), but is not a doer of it, has no share in the priest- 
hood, but is like a cowherd, counting the cows of others. 
4 



42 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



Hatred Ceases by Love 

" He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed 
me," — hatred in those who harbor such thoughts will never 
cease. 

" He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed 
me,"- — hatred in those who do not harbor [such?] thoughts will 
cease. 

For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time — hatred 
•ceases by love ; this is an old rule. 

Ox Reflection. 

Reflection is the path to immortality, thoughtlessness the 
path to death. Those who reflect do not die, those who are 
thoughtless are as if dead already. 

Those wise people, meditative, steady, always possessed of 
strong powers, attain to Nirvana, the highest happiness. 

By rousing himself, by reflection, restraint, and control, the 
wise man makes for himself an island which no flood can 
overwhelm. 

By earnestness did Maghavan (Indra) rise to the lordship 
of the gods. People praise earnestness ; thoughtlessness is 
always blamed. 

Knowing that this body is (fragile) like a jar, and making 
this thought firm like a fortress, one should attack Mara (the 
tempter) with the weapons of knowledge, one should watch 
him when conquered, and should never cease (from the fight). 

Flowers. 

He who knows that this body is like froth, and has learned 
that it is unsubstantial as a mirage, will break the flower-pointed 
arrow of Mara (the tempter), and never see the King of Death. 

As the bee collects nectar and departs without injuring the 
flower, or its color or perfume, so let the sage dwell on earth. 

Like a beautiful flower, full of color but without perfume, 
are the fine but fruitless words of him who does not accord- 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



43 



ingly; but like a beautiful flower, full of color and full of 
perfume, are the fruitful words of him who acts accordingly. 

As on a heap of rubbish cast upon the highway, the lily 
will grow, full of sweet perfume and delightful, thus the disciple 
of the truly enlightened Buddha shines forth by his knowledge 
among those who are like rubbish, among the people that walk 
in darkness. 

The Fool. 

If a traveler does not meet with one who is his better or 
his equal, let him firmly keep his solitary journey; for there is 
no companionship with a fool. 

If a fool be associated with a wise man all his life, he will 
perceive the truth as little as a spoon perceives the taste of 
soup ; but if an intelligent man be associated with a wise man 
only for one minute, he will' soon perceive the truth, as the 
tongue perceives the taste of soup. 

As long as the evil deed done does not bear fruit, the fool 
thinks it is honey ; but when it ripens the fool suffers grief. 

The Venerable. 

As a solid rock is not shaken by the wind, wise people 
falter not amidst praise or blame. 

He whose passions are stilled, who is not absorbed in 
enjoyment, who has perceived the Void, the Unconditioned, 
the Absolute, his path is difficult to understand, like that of the 
birds in the ether. 

The man who is free from credulity, but knows the Uncre- 
ated, who has cut all ties, removed all temptations, renounced 
all desires, he is the greatest of men. In a hamlet or a forest, 
in the deep water or on dry land, wherever venerable persons 
(Arahanta) dwell, that place is delightful. 



44 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



Self-Conquest. 

If one man conquer in battle a thousand times thousand 
men, and if another conquer himself, he is the greatest of con- 
querors. 

One's own self conquered is better than all other people ; 
not even a god, a Gandharva, not Mara with Brahman, could 
change into defeat the victory of a man who has vanquished 
himself and always lives under restraint. 

If a man worship Agni (fire) for a hundred years in the 
forest, and if he pay homage for one moment to a man whose 
soul is grounded (in true knowledge), better is that homage 
than sacrifice for a hundred years. 

He who lives a hundred years ignorant and unrestrained, a 
life of one day is better if a man is wise and reflecting ; and 
he who lives a hundred years not seeing the immortal place, a 
life of one day is better if a man* sees the immortal place. 

He who lives a hundred years not seeing the highest law, a 
life of one day is better if a man see the highest law. 

Not the failures of others, not their sins of commission or 
omission, but his own misdeeds and negligences, should the 
sage take notice of. 

By oneself the evil is done, by oneself one suffers, by 
oneself evil is left undone, by oneself one is purified. Purity 
and impurity belong to oneself; no one can purify another. 

Work out your own Salvation. 

You yourself must make the effort. The Tathagatas (Budd- 
has) are only preachers. The thoughtful who enter the way 
are freed from the bondage of Mara. 

Watching his speech, well restrained in mind, let a man 
never commit any wrong with his body ! Let a man but keep 
these three roads to action clear, and he will achieve the way 
which is taught by the wise. 

Through zeal knowledge is gotten, through lack of zeal 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



45 



knowledge is lost ; let a man who knows this double path of 
gain and loss thus place himself that knowledge may grow. 

Cut out the love of self like an autumn lotus, with thy 
hand ! Cherish the road to peace. 

Reward of Holiness. 

Better than sovereignty, better than going to heaven, better 
than lordship over all worlds, is the reward of the first step in 
holiness. 

Kinsfolk, friends and lovers salute a man who has been 
long away and returns safe from afar. In like manner his good 
works receive him who had done good and has gone from this 
world to another. 

He whose evil deeds are covered by good deeds brightens 
up this world, like the moon freed from clouds. 

Good and Evil. 

If a man commits a sin, let him not do it again ; let him 
not delight in sin ; pain is the outcome of evil. 

If a man does what is good let him do it again ; let him 
delight in it ; happiness is the outcome of good. 

He who has no wound in his hand may touch poison with 
his hand ; poison does not affect him ; nor is there evil for one 
who does not commit evil. 

Let no man think lightly of evil, saying in his heart, It will 
not come near me. Even by the falling of water-drops a water- 
pot is filled ; the fool becomes full of evil, even if he gathers 
it little by little. 

Let no man think lightly of good, saying in his heart, It 
will not benefit me. Even by the falling of water-drops a 
water-pot is filled ; the wise man becomes full of good, even if 
he gather it little by little. 

Preparation for Death. 
Thou art now like a sere leaf, the messengers of death 



4 6 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



(Yama) have come near to thee ; thou standest at the door of 
thy departure, and thou hast no provision for thy journey. 

Make thyself an island, work hard, be wise ! When thy 
infirmities are blown away, and thou art free from guilt, thou 
wilt enter into the heavenly world of the elect (Ariya). 

Thy life has come to an end, thou art come near to Death 
(Yama), there is no resting-place for thee on the road, and thou 
hast no provision for thy journey. 

Make thyself an island, work hard, be wise ! When thy 
infirmities are blown away, and thou art free from guilt, thou 
wilt not enter again into birth and decay. 

Let a wise man blow off the infirmities of his soul, as a 
smith blows off the impurities of silver, one by one, little by 
little, and from time to time. 

Impurity arises from the iron, and having arisen from it, it 
destroys it : thus do a transgressor's own works lead him to the 
evil path. * * * 

" Here shall I dwell in the rain, here in winter and sum- 
mer f thus' meditates the fool, and does not think of death. 

Death comes and carries off that man, surrounded by 
children and flocks, his mind distracted, as a flood carries off 
a sleeping village. 

Sons are no help, nor a father, nor relations ; there is no 
help from kinsfolk for one whom death has seized. 

A wise man and good man who knows the meaning of this 
should quickly clear the way that leads to Nirvana. 

Overcome Evil with Good. 

Let a man overcome anger with love, let him overcome 
evil by good, let him overcome the greedy by liberality, the 
liar by truth. 

He who holds back rising anger like a rolling chariot, him 
I call a real driver ; other people are but holding the reins. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



47 



Practice Before Precept. 

Let each man first direct himself to what is proper, then 
let him teach others ; thus a wise man will not suffer. 

Let each man make himself as he teaches others to be ; he 
who is well-subdued may subdue (others) * one's own self is diffi- 
cult to subdue. 

Temperance. 

The man who gives himself to drinking intoxicating liquors, 
he, even in this world, digs up his own root. 

There is no fire like passion, no shark like hatred, no snare 
like folly, no torrent like greed. 

He who by causing pain to others, wishes to obtain pleasure 
himself, entangled in the bonds of hatred, will never be free 
from hatred. 

The sages who injure nobody, and who always control their 
body, will go to the unchangeable place (Nirvana), where they 
will suffer no more. 

The Awakened. 

Not to commit any sin, to do good, and to purify one's 
mind, that is the teaching of the Awakened. 

Not to blame, not to strike, to live restrained under the 
law, to be moderate in eating, to sleep and eat alone, and to 
dwell on the highest thoughts; this is the teaching of the 
Awakened. 

There is no satisfying lusts, even by a shower of gold 
pieces ; he who knows that lusts have a short taste and cause 
pain, he is wise. 

He who takes refuge with Buddha, the Law and the Church ; 
he who with clear understanding sees the four holy truths, viz : 
Pain, the origin of pain, the destruction of pain, and the eight- 
fold holy way that leads to the quieting of pain ; that is the 
safe and best refuge ; having gone to that refuge, a man is 
delivered from all pain. 



48 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



Health is the greatest of gifts, contentedness the best 
riches ; trust is the best of relatives, Nirvana, the highest hap- 
piness. 

No Hiding place for Sin. 

Not in the sky, not in the midst of the sea, not if we enter 
into the clefts of the mountains, is there known a spot in the 
whole world where a man might be freed from an evil deed. 

Not nakedness, not platted hair, not dirt, not fasting, or 
lying on the earth, not rubbing with dust, not sitting motion- 
less, can purify a mortal who has not overcome desires. 

If a man has transgressed one law, and speaks lies, and 
scoffs at another world, there is no evil he will not do. 

The Brahmana. 

Him I call indeed a Brahmana who does not offend by 
body, word, or thought, and is controlled on these three points. 

He who has cut all fetters, and who never trembles, he who 
is independent and unshackled, him I call indeed a Brahmana. 

He who is tolerant with the intolerant, mild with fault- 
finders, free from passion among the passionate, him I call 
indeed a Brahmana. 

He from whom anger and hatred, pride and envy, have 
dropt like a mustard seed from the point of an awl, him I call 
indeed Brahmana. 

He who fosters no desires for this world or for the next, 
has no inclinations and is unshackled, him I call indeed a 
Brahmana. 



A MODERN BUDDHIST. 

Views of Chao Phya Thipakon, 

Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Sia/n, from 1856 to 186 >j, 
on Buddhis7ii a?id other religions. 

Dr. GutzlafT(a Christian Missionary) declared that 'Samana 
Khodom only taught the people to reverence himself and his 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



49 



disciples, saying that by such means merit and heaven could 
be obtained ; teaching them to respect the temples and sacred 
grounds, lest by injuring them they should go to hell — a teaching 
designed only for the protection of himself and his disciples, 
and of no advantage to any others." I replied : "In Chris- 
tianity there is a command to worship God alone, and no other ; 
Mahomet also taught the worship of one only, and promised 
that he would take into heaven every one who joined his 
religion, even the murderer of his parents, while those who did 
not join, however virtuous, should go to hell. * * Is such 
teaching fit for belief? Buddha did not teach that he alone 
should be venerated, nor did he, the just one, ever teach that 
it was right to persecute other religions. As for adoration, so 
far as I know, men of every religion adore the holy one of their 
religion. Buddha neither taught it was necessary to adore him 

alone, nor offered the alternative of hell, as other religions do/' 
* # # # * # % * # 

Dr. Gutzlaff once said to me, "Samana Khodom (or 
Buddha) having entered Nirvana (the perfect rest), is entirely 
lost and non-existent; who, then, will give any return for recita- 
tions in his praise, benedictions, reverences, observances and 
merit-making ? It is a country without a king, where merit is 
unrewarded, because there is no one to reward it ; but the 
religion of Jesus Christ has Jehovah and Christ, to receive 
prayer and praise, to reward merit, and give recompense." I 
replied, " It is true that the Lord Buddha does not give the 
reward of merit ; but if any do as he has taught, they will find 
their recompense in the act. Even when on earth Buddha had 
no power to lead to heaven those who prayed, but did not fol- 
low and honor the just way. The holy religion of Buddha is 
perfect justice springing from a man's own meritorious dispo- 
sition, which rewards the good and punishes the evil. * * 
Even though the Lord has entered Nirvana, his grace and 
benevolence are not exhausted." * * * 

Buddha said : "Do not believe merely on the authority of 
your teachers and masters, or traditions ; I tell you all, you 



5° 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



must, of your own selves, know, that 1 this is evil and punishable, 
this is censured by wise men, belief in this will bring no advan- 
tage, but will cause sorrow.' And when you know this, 
eschew it." * * * * * 

As to the sin of drinking intoxicating things, consider ! By 
nature there is already an intoxication in man, caused by 
desire, anger and folly ; he is already inclined to excess, and 
not thoughtful of the impermanence and vanity of things. If 
we stimulate this by drinking, it will become more daring ; and 
if the natural inclination is to anger, it will become more 
excessive, and acts of violence and murder will result. So of 
other inclinations. The drunken man neither thinks of future 
retribution nor present punishment. Spirituous liquors cause 
disease and short life ; and their use, when a habit, cannot be 
dispensed with, so that men spend their money unprofitably, 
and when it is spent become thieves. The evil is both future 
and immediate. *..'*'* 

What is the fate of those who have had no opportunity of 
learning the religion of Buddha ? All men have ideas of right 
and wrong, and according to their virtues and vices they will 
accumulate merit and demerit to shape their next existence. * 
These sects (of Christians, Catholics, Protestants, &c.) 
worship the same God and Christ ; why then should they blame 
each other, and charge each other with believing wrongly, and 
say to each other "you are wrong and will go to hell, we are 
right and will go to heaven?" It is one religion, yet how can 
we join it, when each party threatens us with hell if we agree 
with the other, and there is none to decide between them ? I 
beg comparison of this with the teachings of the Lord Buddha, 
that whoever endeavors to keep the Commandments, and is 
charitable, and walks virtuously, must attain heaven. * * 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



51 



CHAPTER III. 

CHINA* 

CONFUCIUS— MENCIUS 
Analycts of Confucius. 
The Golden Rule. 

Chung-kung asked about perfect virtue. The Master said : 
" It is, when you go abroad, to behave to every one as if you 
were receiving a great guest ; to employ the people as if you 
were asssisting at a great sacrifice ; not to do to others as 
you would not wish done to yourself ; to have no mur- 
muring against you in the country, and none in the family. ; " 
Chung-kung said : " Though I am deficient in intelligence and 
vigor, I will make it my business to practice this lesson." 

Tsze-kung asked, saying : " Is there one word which may 
serve as a rule of practice for all one's life?" The Master 
said : " Is not reciprocity such a word ? What you do not 
want done to yourself, do not do to others." 

Unity. 

The Master said : "A man should say, I am not concerned 
that I have no place, I am concerned how I may fit myself for 
one. I am not concerned that I am not known, I seek to be 
worthy to be known." 

The Master said: "Sin, my doctrine is that of an all-per- 
vading unity." The disciple Tsang replied, " Yes." 

The Master went out, and the other disciples asked, saying : 
" What do his words mean?" Tsang said : " The doctrine of 
our master is to be true to the principles of our nature and the 
benevolent exercise of them to others — this and nothing 



* See Appendix C, for dates, &c. 



52 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



The Master said : " The mind of the superior man is con- 
versant with righteousness ; the mind of the mean man is 
conversant with gain." 

The Master said : "When we see men of worth, we should 
think of equaling them ; when we see men of a contrary char- 
acter, we should turn inward and examine ourselves/' 

The Master said : "Learning without thought is labor lost; 
thought without learning is perilous." 

The Master said: "The study of strange doctrines is inju- 
rious indeed ! " 

The Master said: "Yew, shall I teach you what knowledge 
is ? When you know a thing, to hold that you know it ; and 
when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know 
it ; this is knowledge." 

The Master said: "If the scholar be not grave, he will not 
call forth any veneration, and his learning will not be solid." 

Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles. 

Have no friends not equal to yourself. 

When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them. 

The Master said : " High station filled without indulgent 
generosity ; ceremonies performed without reverence ; mourning 
conducted without sorrow; wherewith should I contemplate 
such ways ? " 



Perfect Virtue. 

Tsze-chang asked Confucius about perfect virtue. Con- 
fucius said : " To be able to practice five things everywhere 
under heaven constitutes perfect virtue." He begged to ask 
what they were, and was told : " Gravity, generosity of soul^ 
sincerity, earnestness, and kindness. If you are grave, you 
will not be treated with disrespect. If you are generous, you 
will win all. If you are sincere, people will repose trust in 
you. If you are earnest, you will accomplish much. If you 
are kind, this will enable you to employ the services of others." 

Tsze-kung said : " What I do not wish men to do to me, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



53 



/ also wish not to do to men." The Master said : " Tsze, 
you have not attained to that." 

Yen Yuen asked about perfect virtue. The Master said : 
" To subdue one's-self and return to propriety, is perfect virtue. 
If a man can for one day subdue himself and return to pro- 
priety, all under heaven will ascribe perfect virtue to him. Is 
the practice of perfect virtue from a man himself, or is it from 
others ? " 

Yen Yuen said : " I beg to ask the steps of that process." 
The Master replied : " Look not at what is contrary to pro- 
priety ; listen not to what is contrary to propriety ; speak not 
what is contrary to propriety ; make no movement which is 
contrary to propriety." 

The Complete Man. 

Tsze-loo asked what constituted a complete man. The 
Master said : " Suppose a man with the knowledge of Tsang 
Woo-chung, the freedom from covetousness of Kung-ch'o, the 
bravery of Chwang of Peen, and the varied talents of Yen 
K'ew ; add to these the accomplishments of the rules of pro- 
priety and music : — such an one might be reckoned a co?nplete 
man." 

He then added : " But what is the necessity for a complete 
man of the present day to have all these things ? The man, 
who in the view of gain thinks of righteousness ; who in the 
view of danger is prepared to give up his life ; and who does 
not forget an old agreement, however far back it extends : — 
such a man may be reckoned a complete man." 

Conduct of Life. 

The Master said : "At fifteen, I had my mind bent on 
learning. 

"At thirty, I stood firm. 

"At forty, I had no doubts. 

"At fifty, I knew the decrees of heaven. 



54 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



" At sixty, my ear was an obedient organ for the reception 
of truth. 

"At seventy, I could follow what my heart desired, without 
transgressing what was right." 

The Superior Man. 

Sze-ma New asked about the superior man. The Master 
said : " The superior man has neither anxiety nor fear." 

"Being without anxiety or fear," said New, "does this 
constitute what we call the superior man ? " 

The Master said : "When internal examination discovers 
nothing wrong, what is there to be anxious about, what is there 
to fear? 

"Let the superior man never fail reverentially to order his 
own conduct, and let him be respectful to others and observant 
of propriety ; then all within the four seas will be his brothers." 

Tsze-kung asked what constituted the superior man. The 
Master said: "He acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks 
according to his actions. 

"The superior man is catholic and no partizan. The mean 
man is a partizan and not catholic. 

"The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in 
his actions. 

" The way of the superior man is threefold, but I am not 
equal to it. Virtuous, he is free from anxieties ; wise, he is 
free from perplexities; bold, he is free from fear. 

"The superior man thinks of virtue; the small man thinks 
of comfort. The superior man thinks of the sanctions of law ; 
the small man thinks of favors which he ?7iay receive. 

"There are three things of which the superior man stands 
in awe : He stands in awe of the ordinances of Heaven ; he 
stands in awe of great men ; he stands in awe of the words 
of sages. 

"The mean man does not know the ordinances of Heaven, 
and consequently does not stand in awe of them. He is disre- 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



55 



spectful to great men. He makes sport of the words of 
sages. 

"There are three things which the superior man guards 
against. In youth, when the physical powers are not settled, 
he guards against lust. When he is strong, and the physical 
powers are full of vigor, he guards against quarrelsomeness. 
When he is old, and the animal powers are decayed, he guards 
against covetousness." 

Virtue and Simplicity. 

The Master said : " Admirable indeed was the virtue of 
Hwuy ! With a single bamboo dish of rice, a single gourd 
dish of drink, and living in his mean narrow lane, while others 
could not have endured the distress, he did not allow his joy 
to be affected by it. Admirable indeed was the virtue of 
Hwuy ! " 

Yen K'ew said : " It is not that I do not delight in your 
doctrines, but my strength is insufficient." The Master said : 
" Those whose strength is insufficient give over in the middle 
of the way, but now you limit yourself." 

The Master said : "With coarse rice to eat, with water to 
drink, and my bended arm for a pillow • — I have still joy in 
the midst of these things. Riches and honors acquired by 
unrighteousness are to me as a floating cloud." 

The Master said : "If the will be set on virtue, there will 
be no practice of wickedness. 

" Riches and honors are what men desire. If they cannot be 
obtained in he proper way, they should not be held. Poverty 
and meanness are what men dislike. If it cannot be obtained 
in the proper way it should not be avoided." 

Power of Spirits. 

The philosopher Tsang said : "Let there be acareful atten- 
tion to perform the funeral rites to parents, and let them be 



56 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



followed when long gone with the ceremonies of sacrifice; then 
the virtue of the people will resume its proper excellence. " 

The Master said : " I consider my not being present at the 
sacrifice, as if I did not sacrifice. " 

He sacrificed to the dead, as if they were present. He sac- 
rificed to the spirits, as if the spirits were present. 

He said : "How vast the power of spirits ! An ocean of 
invisible intelligences surround us everywhere. If you look 
for them you cannot see them. If you listen for them you 
cannot hear them. Identified with the substance of all things, 
they cannot be separated from it. They cause men to sanctify 
and purify their hearts. * * They are everywhere, above 
us, on the right, and on the left. Their coming cannot be 
calculated. How important we do not neglect them I" 

To Exalt Virtue. 

Fan-ch'e rambling with the Master under the trees about the 
rain-altars, said : "I venture to ask how to exalt virtue, to cor- 
rect cherished evil, and to discover delusions. " 

The Master said : " Truly a good question ! 

" If doing what is to be done be made the first business, 
and success a secondary consideration ; — is not this the way to 
exalt virtue ? To assail one's own wickedness and not assail 
that of others ; — is not this the way to correct cherished evil ? 
For a morning's anger, to disregard one's own life, and involve 
that of his parents ; — is not this a case of delusion?" 

Fan-ch'e asked about benevolence. The Master said, " It 
is to lovetf// men." He asked about knowledge. The Master 
said : " It is to know all men. 

"To give one's-self earnestly to the duties due to men, and, 
while respecting spiritual beings, to keep aloof from them, may 
be called wisdom." He asked about perfect virtue. The 
Master said : "The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be 
overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent con- 
sideration ; — this may be called perfect virtue." 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



57 



The Master said : " Where the solid qualities are in excess 
of accomplishments, we have rusticity ; where the accomplish- 
ments are in excess of the solid qualities, we have the manners 
of a clerk. When the accomplishments and solid qualities are 
equally blended, we then have the man of complete virtue. 

" Man is born for uprightness. If a man lose his upright- 
ness, and yet live, his escape from death is the effect of mere 
good fortune." 

Sincerity. 

They who know the truth are not equal to those who love 
it, and they who love it are not equal to those who find 
pleasure in it. 

He is the sage who naturally and easily embodies the right 
way. He who attains to sincerity, is he who chooses what is 
good, and firmly holds it fast. 

To this attainment there are requisite the extensive study 
of what is good, accurate inquiry about it, careful reflection on 
it, the clear discrimination of it, and the earnest practice of it. 

It is only he who is possessed of the most complete sin- 
cerity that can exist under heaven, who can give its full 
development to his nature. Able to give its full development 
to his own nature, he can do the same to the nature of other 
men. Able to give its full development to the nature of other 
men, he can give their full development to the natures of ani- 
mals and things. Able to give their full development to the 
natures of creatures and things, he can assist the transforming 
and nourishing powers of Heaven and Earth. 

Next to the above is he who cultivates to the utmost the 
shoots of goodness in him. From those he can attain to the 
possession of sincerity; this sincerity becomes apparent. 
From being apparent, it becomes manifest ; from being man- 
ifest, it becomes brilliant ; brilliant, it affects others ; affecting 
others, they are changed by it ; changed by it, they are trans- 
formed. It is only he who is possessed of the most complete 
sincerity that can exist under heaven, who can transform. 



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It is characteristic of the most entire sincerity to be able 
to foreknow. When a nation or family is about to flourish, 
there are sure to be happy omens ; and when it is about to 
perish, there are sure to be unlucky omens. Such events are 
seen in the milfoil and tortoise, and affect the movements of 
the four limbs. When calamity or happiness is about to come, 
the good shall certainly be foreknown by him, and the evil 
also. Therefore the individual possessed of the most com- 
plete sincerity is like a spirit. 

Sincerity is the end and beginning of things ; without sin- 
cerity there would be nothing. On this account, the superior 
man regards the attainment of sincerity as the most excellent 
thing. 

The possessor of sincerity does not merely accomplish the 
self-completion of himself. With this quality he completes 
other men and things also. The completing himself shows his 
perfect virtue. The completing other men and things shows his 
knowledge. Both these are virtues belonging to the nature, 
and this is the way by which a union is effected of the external 
and internal. Therefore, whenever he, the entirely sincere 
man, employs them, that is, these virtues, their action will be 
right. 

Sincerity *makes him the coequal of Heaven. So far- 
reaching and long-continuing, it makes him infinite. 

Such being its nature, without any display, it becomes 
manifested ; without any movement, it produces changes; and 
without any effort, it accomplishes its ends. 

The way of Heaven and Earth may be completely declared 
in one sentence : They are without any doubleness, and so 
they produce things in a manner that is unfathomable. 

The way of Heaven and Earth is large and substantial, 
high and brilliant, far-reaching and long-enduring. 

The heaven now before us is only this bright shining spot ; 
but when viewed in its inexhaustible extent, the sun, moon, 
stars, and constellations of the zodiac, are suspended in it, and 
all things are overspread by it. The earth before us is but a 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



59 



handful of soil ; but when regarded in its breadth and thick- 
ness, it sustains mountains like the Hwa and the Yoh, without 
feeling their weight, and contains the rivers and seas without 
their leaking away. The mountain now before us appears 
only a stone ; but when contemplated in all the vastness of its 
size, we see how the grass and trees are produced on it, and 
birds and beasts dwell on it, and precious things which men 
treasure up are found on "it. The water now before us appears 
but a ladleful; yet extending our view to it unfathomable 
depths, the largest tortoises, iguanas, iguanadons, dragons, 
fishes and turtles, are produced in them, articles of value and 
sources of wealth abound in them. 

The Doctrine of the Mean. 

What Heaven has conferred is called the nature ; an 
accordance with this nature is called the path of duty/ the 
regulation of this path is called instruction. 

The path may not be left for an instant. If it could be 
left, it would not be the path. On this account, the superior 
man does not wait till he sees things, to be cautious, nor till 
he hears things, to be apprehensive. 

There is nothing more visible than what is secret, and 
nothing more manifest than what is minute. Therefore the 
superior man is watchful over himself, when he is alone. 

While there are no stirrings of pleasure, anger, sorrow, or 
joy, the mind may be said to be in the state of equilibrium. 
When those feelings have been stirred, and they act in their 
due degree, there ensues what may be called the state of 
harmony. This equilibrium is the great root from which 
grow all the human actings in the world, and this hzrjnoiiy is 
the universal path which they all should pursue. 

Let the states of equilibrium and harmony exist in perfec- 
tion, and a happy order will prevail throughout heaven and 
earth, and all things will be nourished and flourish, 

The superior man cultivates a friendly harmony, without 
being weak. How firm is he in his energy ! He stands erect 



6o 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



in the middle, without inclining to either side. How firm is he 
in his energy ! When good principles prevail in the govern- 
ment of his country, he does not change from what he was in 
retirement. How firm is he in his energy ! When bad prin- 
ciples prevail in the country, he maintains his course to death, 
without changing. How firm is he in his energy ! 

The Master said : " To live in obscurity, and yet practice 
wonders, in order to be mentioned with honor in future ages j 
this is what I do not do. 

" The good man tries to proceed according to the right 
path, but when he has gone halfway, he abandons it ; I am not 
able so to stop. 

" The superior man accords with the course of the mean. 
Though he may be all unknown, unregarded by the world, he 
feels no regret. It is only the sage who is able for this. 

"In a position of wealth and honor, he does what is 
proper to a position of wealth and honor. In a poor and low 
position, he does what is proper to a poor and low position. 
Situated among barbarous tribes, he does what is proper to a 
situation among barbarous tribes. In a position of sorrow and 
difficulty, he does what is proper in a position of sorrow and 
difficulty. The superior man can find himself in no positon in 
which he is not himself. 

" In a high situation, he does not treat with contempt his 
inferiors. In a low situation, he does not court the favor of 
his superiors. He rectifies himself, and seeks for nothing from 
others, so that he has no dissatisfactions. He does not murmur 
against heaven, nor grumble against men. 

"Thus it is that the superior man is quiet and calm, waiting 
for the appointments of Heaven, while the mean man walks in 
dangerous paths, looking for lucky occurrences. 

"In archery we have something like the way of the superior 
man. When the archer misses the centre of the target, he 
turns round and seeks for the cause of his failure in himself." 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



61 



Sayings of Mencius. 

There is a nobility of Heaven, and there is a nobility of 
man. Benevolence, righteousness, self-consecration and fidelity, 
with unwearied joy in these virtues; — these constitute the nobil- 
ity of Heaven. To be a kung, a k'ing, or a ta-foo ; — this 
constitutes the nobility of man. 

The men of antiquity cultivated their nobility of Heaven, 
and the nobility of man came to them in its train. 

The men of the present day cultivate their nobility of 
Heaven in order to seek for the nobility of man, and when they 
have obtained that, they throw away the other : — their delusion 
is extreme. The end is simply this, that they must lose that 
nobility of man as well. 

To desire to be honored is the common mind of men. 
And all men have in themselves that which is truly honorable. 
Only they do not think it. 

Benevolence subdues its opposite just as water subdues 
fire. Those, however, who now-a-days practice benevolence, 
do it as if with one cup of water they could save a whole 
wagon-load of fuel which was on fire, and when the flames 
were not extinguished, were to say that water cannot subdue 
fire. This conduct, moreover, greatly encourages those who 
are not benevolent. 

The final issue will simply be this — the loss of that small 
amount of benevolence. 

Men must be decided on what they will not do, and then 
they are able to act with vigor in what they ought to do. 

The great man does not think beforehand of his words that 
they may be sincere, nor of his actions that they may be reso- 
lute ; — he simply speaks and does what is right. 

The great man is he who does 7iot lose his child'' s heart. 

The nourishment of parents when living is not sufficient to 
be accounted the great thing. It is only in the performing 
their obsequies when dead, that we have what can be consid- 
ered the great thing. 



62 



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Of services which is the greatest? The service of parents 
is the greatest. Of charges, which is the greatest? The 
charge of one's-self is the greatest. That those who do not 
fail to keep themselves are able to serve their parents is what 
I have heard. But I have never heard of any, who, having 
failed to keep themselves, were able notwithstanding to serve 
their parents. 

Wherever the superior man passes through, transformation 
follows; wherever he abides, his influence is of a spiritual 
nature. It flows abroad, above and beneath, like that of 
Heaven and Earth. 



CHAPTER IV. 



PERSIA.* 



ZOROASTER.— MODERN PARSEES. 



Prayer to the Good Mind. 

I raise my hands in adoration and worship : first, all true 
works of the divine Spirit and the intelligence of the good 
Mind, that I may be partaker of this blessedness. To those 
works and the earth-soul do I offer up my prayer. 

With pious sense will I approach Thee, thou Wise and 
Living, with the prayer that thou grant me the earthly and 
spiritual life. Through truth are these blessings to be attained, 
which the Self-luminous sends to those who strive therefor. 

Long as my strength shall last to worship, so long will I 
continue in search after truth. * * * * 

Thee I conceive as the original First, as the One Supreme, 
both in nature and in mind, father of the good disposition, — 
since with clear eye I beheld thee, as the essential substance of 
truth. 



Agriculture, Health, Truth. 

With the fruits of the field increases the law of Ahura- 
Mazda (Ormuzd), and with them it is multiplied a hundred 
fold. The earth rejoices when man builds on it his house, 
when his flocks abound, when, surrounded by wife and chil- 
dren, he makes the grass and the corn to grow, and plants 
fruit-trees abundantly. 

* Sec Appendix D. 



64 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



I invoke and worship health and goodness. I invoke and 
worship the male and female of animals, houses, the store- 
houses where corn is kept, water, earth, trees, corn. I adore 
this earth and sky, the stars, the moon, the sun \ light which 
had no beginning and is increate, and also the works of the 
holy and celestial being. I invoke and worship the mountains, 
depositories of the wisdom given by Ahura-Mazda, radiant 
with purity, perfectly radiant, and the splendor of kings given 
by Ahura-Mazda, and their unborrowed brightness. I invoke 
those who are holy, and those who are pure. I invoke and 
worship the powerful feroners (spirits) of pure men. He who 
sows the soil with diligence acquires a greater stock of religious 
merit than he could gain by ten thousand prayers in idleness. 

Who purely invokes the truths, he has the essence of the 
supreme soul ; hence is he inspired to the culture of the soil. 

Who honors truth in word and deed, O Mazda, he best serves 
and worships thee. 

Come to me, ye high realities. Grant me your immortal- 
ity, your duration of possession forever ! 

Let me become those things that I have longed for. Grant 
me the gift of long life. May none of you withhold it, since 
it is dedicated to the redemption of that world which is thine ! 

The Beginning. 

This will I ask thee, tell me it right, thou Living Wise One : 
How was the beginning of this best, the actual life ? Whereby 
may we aid that which is now here ? 

This will I ask thee : Who is the first Father and Progenitor 
of Truth ? Who laid the path for the sun and stars ? Who 
caused the moon to wax and wane, but thou ? All this would 
I know ; other things are comprehensible to me. 

This will I ask thee : Who made the earth and the sky 
above it ? Who is in the wind and storms that they so swiftly 
run ? 

This will I ask thee : Who made the useful light and the 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



65 



darkness, by their alternation bringing labor and rest ? Who 
the morning, midday, and night, which constantly remind him 
that knows the divine revealings of his obligations ? 

This, too, will I ask thee : Who made this high land (Bac- 
tria) with its riches ? Who forms constantly the fine son from 
the father, as by the weaver's art ? 

Oracles of Zoroaster. 

The Father hath snatched away himself, neither hath he 
shut up his own fire in his mental potence. 

For the Father perfected all things, and delivered them 
over to the second mind, which the whole race of men calls 
the first. 

Light, begotten of the Father, for he alone, having plucked 
the flower of the mind from the Father's vigor — 

Neither went he (the Original One) forth, but abode in the 
parental depth, and in the adytum, according to divinely nour- 
ished silence. 

He makes similitude of himself, assuming the type of 
forms. 

The parental mind hath sown symbols through the world. 

There is something intelligible which it behooves thee to 
apprehend with the flower of the mind. 

Time — the mundane God, eternal, infinite, young, old, of 
spiral form. 

Look not into the fatal name of this nature. 

The soul is a bright fire, and by the power of the father 
remains immortal and is mistress of life. 

It is after the model af the mind, but being born, hath 
something of the body. 

The paternal mind hath implanted symbols in souls. 

To the slow mortal the gods are swift. 

The furies are stranglers of men. 

Enlarge not thy destiny. 



66 



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Right Living and the Future. 

Do not be carried away by anger. Angry words and scorn- 
ful looks are sin. Even the intent to strike another deserves 
punishment. Opposition to peace is sin. Reply to thine 
enemy with gentleness. Contend constantly against evil, 
morally and physically, internally and externally. Strive to 
diminish the power of Arimanes and destroy his works. If a 
man has done this he may meet death fearlessly ; well assured 
that radiant Izeds will lead him across the luminous bridge into 
a paradise of eternal happiness. But though he has been 
brave in battle, killed wild beasts, and fought with external 
evil, if he has neglected to combat evil within himself he has 
reason to fear that Arimanes and his Devs will seize him and 
carry him to Duzukh (hell), where he will be punished accord- 
ing to his sins ; not to satisfy the vengeance of Ormuzd, but 
because, having connected himself with evil, this is the only 
means of being purified therefrom, so as to be capable of enjoy- 
ing happiness in future. Every man pure in thoughts, words 
and actions will go to the celestial region 

Prayer to Ormuzd and his Works. 

I address my prayer to Ormuzd, Creator of all things ; who 
always has been, who is, and who will be forever ; who is wise 
and powerful ; who made the great arch of heaven, the sun, 
moon, stars, winds, clouds, water, earth, fire, trees, animals, 
metals, and men; whom Zoroaster adored. Zoroaster, who 
brought to the world the knowledge of the law; who knew by 
natural intelligence and by the ear, what ought to be done, all 
that has been, that is, or that is to be ; the science of sciences, 
the excellent Word, by which souls pass the luminous and 
radiant bridge, separate themselves from the evil regions, and 
go to light and holy dwellings, full of fragrance. O Creator, I 
obey thy laws. I think, act, speak, according to thy orders. I 
separate myself from all sin. I do good works according 
to my power. I adore thee with purity of thought, word and 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



67 



action. I pray to Ormuzd, who recompenses good works, who 
delivers unto the end those who obey his laws. Grant that I 
may arrive at Paradise, where all is fragrance^ light and happi- 
ness. ****** 

O, Ormuzd, pardon the repentant sinner. As I, when a 
man irritates me by his thoughts, words, or actions, carried 
away or not by his passions, if he humble himself before me, 
and addresses to me his prayer, I become his friend. * * 

I pray to Mithras, who has a thousand ears and ten thou- 
sand eyes ; who never sleeps, who is always watchful and 
attentive ; who renders barren lands fertile. 

Thou fire, son of Ormuzd, brilliant and beneficent, given 
by Ormuzd, be favorable to me ! 

I pray to the New Moon, holy, pure and great. I pray to 
the Full Moon, holy, pure and great. I gaze at the moon on 
high, and I honor the light of the moon. The moon is a 
blessed Spirit, created by Ormuzd, to bestow light and glory 
upon the earth. 

I invoke the Source of Waters, holy, pure and great, coming 
from the throne of Ormuzd, from the high mountains ; holy, 
pure, and great. 

I invoke the sweet Earth, I invoke the Mountains, abode 
of happiness, given by Ormuzd, holy, pure and great. 



Hymn to Mithra. 

Mithra, whose long arms grasp with Mithra-strength ; that 
which is Eastern India he seizes, and that which is in the 
Western he smites, and what is on the steppes of Rauha, and 
what is at the ends of the earth. Thou, O Mithra, dost 
seize these, reaching out thy arms. The unrighteous destroyed 
through the just is gloomy of soul. Thus thinks the unright- 
eous ; Mithra, the artless, does not see all these evil deeds, 
these lies. 

But I think in my soul : No earthly man with a hundred- 
fold strength thinks so much evil, as Mithra, with heavenly 



68 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



strength, thinks good. No earthly man, with a hundred-fold 
strength, speaks and does so much evil, as Mithra, with heavenly 
strength, speaks and does good. No earthly man hears with 
the ears as the heavenly Mithra, with a hundred strengths, sees 
every liar. — Khordah Avesta. 

Praise to the Creator. 

With all strength bring I thanks; to the great among 
beings, who created and destroyed, and through his own deter- 
mination of time, wisdom, strength, is higher than the Six 
Amshaspands (archangels), the circumference of heaven, the' 
shining sun, the brilliant moon, the wind, the water, the fire 
the earth, the trees, the cattle, the metals, and mankind. 

Offering and praise to that Lord, the completer of good 
works, who made men greater than all earthly beings, and 
through the gift of speech created them to rule the creatures, 
as warriors against the Daevas (Devs, evil spirits). 

All good do I accept at thy command, O God, and think, 
speak and do it. I believe in the pure law ; by every good 
work seek I forgiveness for all sin. I keep pure for myself 
the serviceable work, and abstinence from the unprofitable. I 
keep pure the six powers — thought, speech, work, memory, 
mind, and understanding. 

I enter on the shining way to Paradise ; may the fearful 
terror of hell not overcome me ! May I step over the bridge 
Chinevat, may I attain Paradise, with much perfume, and all 
enjoyments and brightness. 

Praise to the Overseer, the Lord; who rewards those who 
accomplish good deeds according to his own wish, purifies at 
last the obedient, and at last purifies even the wicked ones of 
hell. All praise to the Creator, to Ormuzd, the all-wise, rich 
in might ; to the Seven Amshaspands ; to Ized Bahram, the 
victorious annihilator of foes. — Khordah Avesta. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



6 9 



A Confession. 

I repent of all sins. All wicked thoughts, words and works 
which I have meditated in the world, corporeal, spiritual, 
earthly and heavenly, I repent of, in your presence, ye 
believers. O Lord, pardon through the three words. 

I confess myself a Zarathustrian, an opponent of the 
Daevas, devoted to belief in Ahura (Ormuzd), for praise, ado- 
ration and satisfaction. 

I praise all good thoughts, words, and works, through 
thought, word and deed. I curse all evil thoughts, words 
and works, away from thought, word and deed. I lay hold on 
all good thoughts, words, and works ; that is, I perform good 
acts. I commit no sins. 

I give to you, ye who are Amshaspands, offering and 
praise, with the heart, with the body, with my own vital 
powers, body and soul. 

I praise the best purity, I hunt away the Devs, I am 
thankful for the good of the Creator, Ormuzd, with the oppo- 
sition which comes from Gana-mainyo. I am contented, and 
agreed in the hope of a resurrection. The Zarathustrian law, 
created by Ormuzd, I take as a plummet. For the sake of 
this, I repent of all sins. 

That which was the wish of Ormuzd the Creator, and I 
ought to have thought, spoken, or done, and have not. That 
which was the wish of Abriman, and I ought not to have 
thought, spoken or done, and yet have; of these sins I repent, 
with thoughts, words and works. 



jo 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



MODERN PARSEE CATECHISM. 

[Translated by Dadabahai Naoroji, Liverpool, 1861.] 

A few Questions and Answers to acquaint the Chil- 
dren of the Holy Zarthosti Community with the 
Mazdiashna Religion, i. e., the worship of God. 

Whom do we, of the Zarthosti Community, believe in ? 
We believe in only one God, and do not believe in any 
besides Him. 

Who is that one God ? 

The God who created the heavens, the earth, the angels, 
the stars, the sun, the moon, the fire, the water, or all the four 
elements, and all things of the two worlds ; — that God we 
believe in. Him we worship, invoke and adore. 

Do we not believe in any other God ? 

Whoever believes in another God is an infidel, and shall 
suffer the punishment of hell. 

What is the form of our God ? 

Our God has neither face nor form, color nor shape, nor 
fixed place. There is no other like Him. He is singly such 
a glory that we cannot praise or describe Him ; nor our mind 
comprehend Him. * * * * 

What is our Religion ? 

Our Religion is, "Worship of God." 

Whence did we receive our religion ? 

God's true prophet, the true Zurthost (Zoroaster) Asphan- 
taman Anoshirwan, brought the religion to us from God. * * 
Whose descendants are we ? 

Of Gayomars. By his progeny was Persia populated. 
Was Gayomars the first man ? 

According to our religion he was so ; but the wise men of 
our community, of the Chinese, the Hindoos, and several other 
nations, dispute this, and say there was human population on 
the earth before Gayomars. * * * * 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



71 



What commands has God sent us through his prophet, the 
exalted Zurthost? 

To know God as one ; to know the prophet, the exalted 
Zurthost, as the true prophet ; to believe the religion and the 
Avosta, brought by him as true beyond all doubt; to believe in 
the goodness of God ; not to disobey any commands of the 
Mazdiashna religion ; to avoid evil deeds ; to exert ourself in 
good deeds ; to pray five times in the day ; to believe in the 
reckoning and justice the fourth morning after death ; to hope 
for heaven, and to fear hell ; to consider doubtless the day of 
general destruction and resurrection ; to remember always that 
God has done what he willed, and shall do what he wills ; to 
face some luminous object, while worshiping God. * * * 

Some deceivers (the Catechism says — meaning the Chris- 
tian missionaries), with the view of acquiring exaltation in the 
world, have set themselves up as prophets, aud going among 
the ignorant and laboring people, have persuaded them that, 
"If you commit sin, I shall intercede for you, plead for you, 
and save you," and thus deceive them; but the wise among 
the people know the deceit. 

If any one commit sin under the belief that he shall be 
saved by somebody, both the deceiver as well as the deceived 
shall be damned to the day of Rasta Khez. * * There is 
no savior. In the other world you shall receive the return 
according to your actions. * * Your Savior is your 
deeds, and God himself. He is the pardoner and the giver. If 
you repent your sins and reform, and if the great Judge con- 
siders you worthy of pardon, or would be merciful to you, He 
alone can and will save you. 



72 CHAPTERS FROM THE 



CHAPTER V. 



EGYPT.* 



THE DIVINE PYMANDER, OR SHEPHERD OF MEN. 



By Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus. 

I, O my Son, write this first book both for humanity's sake 
and for piety toward God. ***** 

For never, O Son, shall, or can, that soul, which, while it 
is in the body, lightens and lifts up itself to know and compre- 
hend that which is Good and True, slide back to the contrary; 
for it is infinitely enamored thereof, and forgetteth all Evils ; 
and when it hath learned and known its Father and Progen- 
itor, it can no more depart or apostatize from that Good, 

And let this, O Son, be the end of Religion and Piety; 
whereunto thou art once arrived, thou shalt both live well and 
die blessedly, whilst thy soul is not ignorant whether it must 
return and fly back again. 

For this, O Son, is the way of Truth, which our Progeni- 
tors, traveled in; and by which, making their journey, they at 
length attained to the Good. It is a venerable way and plain, 

but difficult and hard for the soul to go in that is in the body. 
* * * * * * # 

Of the Soul : that part which is sensible is mortal, but that 
which is reasonable is immortal. 

Every essence is immortal. 

Every essence is unchangeable. 

Every thing that is, is double. 

None of the things that are stand still. 

Not all things are moved by a soul, but everything that is, 
is moved by a soul. * * * 



* See Appendix E for Dates, etc. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



73 



Heaven is the first element. 
Providence is Divine Order. 

Necessity is the minister, or servant, of Providence. 
What is God ? The immutable or unalterable Good. 
What is man ? An unchangeable Evil. 

Vision — Illumination — Aspiration. 

For the sleep of my body was the sober watchfulness of 
my mind ; and the shutting of my eyes the true sight, and my 
silence great with child and full of good ; and the pronounc- 
ing of my words the blossom and fruit of good things. 

And thus came to pass, or happened unto me, which I 
received from my mind, that is, Pymander, the Lord of the 
Word ; whereby I became inspired by God with the Truth. 

For which cause, with my Soul and whole strength, I give 
praise and blessing unto God the Father. 

Holy is God, the Father of all things. 

Holy is God, whose will is performed and accomplished 
by his own powers. 

Holy art Thou, that by Thy word hast established all 
things. 

Holy art Thou, of whom all Nature is the image. 

Holy art Thou, whom Nature hath not formed. 

Holy art Thou, that art stronger than all power. 

Holy art Thou, that art greater than all excellency. 

Holy art Thou, that art better than all praise. 

Accept these reasonable sacrifices from a pure Soul, and a 
heart stretched out unto Thee. 

I beseech Thee, that I may never err from the knowledge 
of Thee; look mercifully upon me, and enable me, and 
enlighten with this grace those that are in ignorance, the 
brothers of my kind, but Thy sons. 

Therefore I believe Thee, and bear witness, and go into 
the Life and Light. 



5 



74 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



The Beginning. 

The glory of all things, God, and that which is Divine, 
and the Divine Nature, the beginning of things that are. 

God, and the Mind, and Nature, and Matter, and Opera- 
tion or Working, and Necessity, and the End, and Renovation. 

For there was in the Chaos an infinite darkness in the 
abyss, or bottomless depth, and water, and a subtle Spirit, 
intelligible in power ; and there went out the Holy Light, and 
the elements were coagulated from the land, out of the moist 
substance. 

And all the Gods distinguished the nature full of seeds. 

And when all things were interminated and unmade up, 
the light things were divided on high, and the heavy things 
were founded on the moist sand, all things being terminated 
or divided by fire ; and being sustained or hung up by the 
Spirit, they were so carried, and the heaven was seen in seven 
circles. 

And the Gods were seen in their Ideas of the stars, with 
all their signs, and the stars were numbered with the Gods in 
them. And the sphere was all lined with air, carried about in 
a circular motion by the Spirit of God. 

And every God, by his internal power, did that which was 
commanded him ; and there were made four-footed things, and 
creeping things, and such as live in the water, and such as fly, 
and every fruitful seed, and grass, and the flowers of all greens, 
all which had sowed in themselves the seeds of regeneration. 

As also the generations of men, to the knowledge of the 
divine works, and a lively or working testimony of nature, and 
a multitude of men, and the dominion of every thing under 
heaven, and the knowledge of good things, and to be increas- 
ed in multitude 

And every soul m flesh, by the wonderful working of the 
Gods in the circles, to the beholding of heaven, the Gods, 
divine works, and the operations of nature. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



75 



The Holy Song. 

Let all the nature of the world entertain the hearing of 
this hymn. 

Be opened, O Earth, and let all the treasure of the rain be 
opened. 

Ye trees, tremble not, for I will sing, and praise the Lord 
of the creation, and the All, the One. 

Be opened, ye Heavens, ye winds stand still, and let the 
immortal circle of God receive these words. 

For I will sing and praise Him that created all things, that 
fixed the earth and hung up the heavens, and commanded the 
sweet water to come out of the ocean into all the world inhab- 
ited, to the use and nourishment of all things, or men. 

That commanded the fire to shine for every action, both 
to God and men. 

Let us together give him blessing, which rideth upon the 
heavens, the Creator of all Nature. 

O, all ye powers that are in me, praise the One, the All. 

Sing together with my will, all ye powers that are in me. 

O holy knowledge, being enlightened by thee, I magnify 
the Intelligible Light, and rejoice in the Joy of the Mind. 

This is God that is better than any name; this is he that is 
secret; this is he that is most manifest; this is he that is to be 
seen by the mind ; this is he that is visible to the eye ; this is 
he that hath no body ; and this is he that hath many bodies, 
rather there is nothing of any body that is not of him ; for he 
alone is all things. 

And for this cause he hath all names, because he is the 
One Father. 

Inscriptions on Egyptian Tombs. 

He loved his father, he honored his mother, he loved his 
brethren, and never went from his home in a bad temper. He 
never preferred the great man to the low one. — Tomb in Upper 
Egypt. 



7 6 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



I honored my father ; I esteemed my mother ; I loved my 
brothers ; I found graves for the unburied dead ; I instructed 
little children ; I took care of orphans as though they were my 
own. For great misfortunes were on Egypt and this city, in 
my time. — Tomb of a Priest at Sais, in reig?i of Cambyses. 

What I have done I will say. My goodness and kindness 
were ample. I never oppressed the widow or the fatherless \ 
I did not treat cruelly the fishermen, the shepherds, or the 
poor laborers. There was nowhere in my time hunger or 
want, for I cultivated all my fields, far and near, that their 
inhabitants might have food. I never preferred the great and 
powerful to the humble and poor, but did equal justice to all. 
— Tomb of a Nomad Prince, at Ben Hassan. 

I lived in truth and fed my soul with justice. What I did 
to men was done in peace, and how I loved God, God and 
my heart well know. I have given bread to the hungry, 
water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, and a shelter to the 
stranger. I honored the gods with sacrifices and the dead 
with offerings. — Tomb of a Pharaoh, at Thebes, 

I never took the child from its mother's bosom, nor the 
poor man from the side of his wife. — On a Tomb at Sycofiolis. 

Amun to Thothmes.* 

I am come ; to thee have I given to strike down Syrian princes ; 
Under thy feet they lie throughout the breadth of their coun- 
try ; 

Like the Lord of Light I made them see thy glory, 
Blinding their eyes with light, O earthly image of Amun ! 

I am come ; to thee have I given to strike down Asian 
peoples; 

Captive now thou hast led the proud Assyrian chieftains ; 
Decked in royal robes, I made them see thy glory : 
In glittering arms and fighting, high in thy lofty chariot. 

* Inscription at Karnak, describing success of Thothmes III, B. C. about 1600, 
translated by De Ronge. The king's triumphs are ascribed to the god Amun. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



77 



I am come; to thee have I given to strike down western 
nations ; 

Cyprus and the Ases have both heard thy name with terror ; 

Like a strong-horned bull I made them see thy glory ; 

Strong with piercing horns, so that none can stand before him. 

I am come ; to thee have I given to strike down Lybian 
archers ; 

All the isles of the Greeks submit to the force of thy spirit ; 

Like a regal lion, I made them see thy glory; 

Couched by the corpse he has made, down in the rocky valley. 

I am come ; to thee have I given to strike down the ends of 
the ocean ; 

In the grasp of the hand is the circling zone of the waters ; 
Like the soaring eagle, I have made them see thy glory ; 
Whose far-seeing eye there is none can hope to escape from. 

Amun. 

The spirit of the Supreme moving on the face of the 
waters. 

The Spirit who animates and perpetuates the world by 
mixing himself with all its parts. 

He who brings hidden things to light. 



78 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



CHAPTER VI. 



HEBREW. 



JUDAISM, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 



True Service and Reward. 

1. Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, 
and show my people their transgressions, and the house of 
Jacob their sins. 

2. Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, 
as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordi- 
nances of their God : They ask of me the ordinances of justice : 
They take delight in approaching to God. 

3. Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? 
Wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no 
knowledge ? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, 
and exact all your labors. 

4. Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with 
the fist of wickedness : ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to 
make your voice to be heard on high. 

5. Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for man to 
afflict his soul ? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and 
to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a 
fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord ? 

6. Is not this the fast that I have chosen ? to loose the 
bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let 
the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke ? 

7. Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou 
bring the poor that are cast out to thy house ? When thou 
seest the naked, that thou cover him ; and that thou hide not 
thyself from thine own flesh? 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



79 



8. Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and 
thine health shall spring forth speedily : and thy righteousness 
shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy 
reward. 

9. Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer ; thou 
shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away 
from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, 
and speaking vanity ; 

10. If thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy 
the afflicted soul ; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and 
thy darkness be as the noon-day : 

11. And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy 
thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones ; and thou shalt 
be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose 
waters fail not. 

12. And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste 
places : thou shalt raise up the foundations of many genera- 
tions ; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach } 
The restorer of paths to dwell in. — Isaiah, Old Testament. 

Perfectness of Divine Law. 

1. The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firma- 
ment sheweth his handy work. 

2. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night 
sheweth knowledge. 

3. There is no speech nor language where their voice is 
not heard. 

4. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their 
words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a taber- 
nacle for the sun. 

5. Which is a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and 
rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. 

6. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his 
circuit unto the ends of it : and there is nothing hid from the 
heat thereof. 



8o 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



7. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul : 
the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. 

8. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart : 
the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. 

9. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever: the 
judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. 

10. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much 
fine gold : sweeter also than honey and the honey-comb. 

11. Moreover, by them is thy servant warned: and in 
keeping of these there is great reward. 

12. Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from 
secret faults. 

13. Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; 
let them not have dominion over me : then shall I be upright, 
and I shall be innocent from the great transgression. 

14. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my 
heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and 
my redeemer. — Psalms of David. 

Extracts from Talmudical and Rabbinical Literature. 

1. Hillel (40 b. c.) said: What is hateful unto thee, thou 
shalt not do unto others. This rule comprises the whole law ; 
everything else is its mere comment. 

2. Rabbi Akiba (a. d. 116) said: Thou shalt love thy 
fellow-man like thyself is the principal rule of the Bible. 

3. The Rabbis (Sanhedrin) said : The good men of all 
nations and denominations shall participate in the future bliss 
of heaven. 

4. Talmud Peah : Charity and benevolence are of more 
importance than all the ceremonies together. 

5. Talmud .Ketuboth : A man who does not practice 
charity, is not better than the one who worships idols. 

6. Yalkut : The Lord said to Moses, do you suppose that 
I make a difference between Jew and Gentile ? I treat them 
all alike ; for every good deed, to each the proper reward. 

7. Ethics of the Fathers : Antigonas of Sadro used to say : 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



8l 



Be not like servants who serve their masters for the sake of 
receiving a reward, but be like servants who serve their master 
without a view of receiving a reward ; and let the fear of God 
be upon you. 

Hillel said: Be of the disciples of Aaron, love peace* 
pursue peace, love all men, and invite them to a life of virtue 
and holiness. 

Simon, the son of Gamaliel, said : The safety of human 
society depends on truth, justice and peace. 

Rabbi Tarphon said : The day is short, the task is great, 
the laborers are lazy, the master presses for dispatch. It is 
not incumbent upon thee to complete the work, but thou art 
not at liberty to abstain from it. 

Rabbi Akiba said: Everything, is seen by Providence, 
though freedom of choice is given to man; the world is 
judged in paternal kindness ; but works of love and charity are 
man's best and noblest title. 

Ben Zoma said : Who is wise ? He who is willing to receive 
instruction from all men. Who is mighty ? He who is sat- 
isfied with his lot. Who is honorable ? He who honors his 
fellow men. 

8. Talmud ; Sabbath : The Sabbath is given to you, but 
you are not given over to the Sabbath. 

Make out of your Sabbath day a week day, and secure 
your independence from the support of men. 

9. Talmud, Berachoth : Knowledge is of more importance 
and consequence than the Temple with all its ceremonies. The 
verse, " do not touch my Messiah, " means, do not disturb the 
children in their schools. 

10. Tulmud, Niddah : Rabbah said : The whole ceremo- 
nial law will once be abolished. 

11. Aben Esra, (a. d. 1090-1170) said: The mediator 
between God and man is none but reason and common sense. 

12. Maimonides (a. d. 1 133-1206) said: In social life 
we recognize no difference whatsoever between Jew or 
Gentile. Our Rabbis have commanded us to consider it a 



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supreme duty to visit the sick of Gentiles, to bury their dead 
on Jewish burial grounds; to support their poor and needy 
ones like the Jewish; for the Psalmist has said : "The Lord is 
good unto all, and his mercy extends over all his works. " 

13. Jehuda Halevi (a. d. 11 20-1 150): The creed and 
denomination of man have nothing to do with his moral worth. 
God judges man according to his good deeds, and not accord- 
ing to his religion. 

13. Isaac Arama (about a. d. 1630) : Every true, good 
and virtuous man is our brother, like any other Jew. 

Peace. 

Rabbi Yehudah Ben Levy said : Great is the power of 
peace. It is as indispensable to the welfare of the universe as 
is the leaven for the fermentation of bread. Were it not for 
the rule of peace, the sword and wild beasts would long ago 
have destroyed our world. 

Rabbi Ben Gamliel said : The world stands upon three 
things : justice, truth and peace. Rabbi Munah, explaining 
this saying, said : Yet all these have only one purpose ; that 
is, peace. 

The Rabbis said: Our Lord loves peace above all. 
Therefore, objects most dear and beloved unto Him, and 
sacred unto them, they called peace — "Sholom" — likewise; as 
the Holy City, Jerusalem. 

Section "Hasholom," of a book of the Talmud, treats on 
peace and closes as follows : All those that are toiling for 
the preservation and restoration of peace, without religious 
distinction, shall inherit of the Lord peace and happiness, here 
and hereafter. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



83 



PHILO JUDAEUS, 

(Born about 20 B. C. in Alexandria, a Pharisee, and learned in Judaism, and in the philo- 
sophy of Plato, Pythagoras, &c. His t4 Fragments " are gathered from incomplete 
and unpublished works, by Eusebius, John of Damascus, from unpublished MSS. in 
English and French libraries, and from Questions on Genesis and Exodus, &c.) 

Of those who Offer Sacrifice. 

The law chooses that a person who brings a sacrifice shall 
be pure, both in body and soul : pure in soul from all passions 
and diseases, and vices, which can be displayed in word or 
deed ; and pure in body from all such things as the body is 
defiled by. And it has appointed a burning purification for 
both these things : for the soul, by the means of the animals 
duly fit for sacrifice, and for the body by ablutions and 
sprinkling — concerning which we shall speak presently ; for it 
is fit to assign the pre-eminence in honor in every point to the 
superior and dominant part of the qualities existing in us, 
namely, the soul. What, then, is the work of purifying the 
soul ? 

The law says : "Look, take care that the victim which 
thou bringest to the altar is perfect, wholly without participa- 
tion in any kind of blemish, selected from many on account of 
its excellence, by the uncorrupted judgment of the priests, and 
by their most acute sight and continued practice exercised in 
the examination of faultless victims. For if you do not see 
this with your eyes more than with your reason, you will not 
wash off all the imperfections and stains which you have 
imprinted on your whole life, partly in consequence of unex- 
pected events, and partly by deliberate purpose ; for you will 
find that this exceeding accuracy of investigation into the 
animals, figuratively signifies the amelioration of your own char- 
acter and conduct ; for the law was not established for the sake 
of irrational animals, but for that of those who have intellect 
aud reason." So that the real object cared for is not the con- 
dition of the victims sacrificed, but that of the sacrificers, that 
they may not be defiled by any unlawful passion. 



3 4 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



Of water and ashes for purifying the body he says : The 
lawgiver's intention is that those who approach the service of 
the living God should first of all know themselves and their 
own essence. For how can a man who L does not know him- 
self ever comprehend the supreme and all-excelling power of 
God ? * * For it is somewhere said with great 
beauty: "He that exhibits proud words or actions offends 
not man alone, but God also, the maker of equality and of 
everything excellent. " * * For the soul is mistress and 
queen, superior in everything, as having received a more 
divine nature. * * God is not pleased even though a 
man bring hecatombs to his altar ; for he possesses all things 
as his own, and stands in need of nothing. But he delights 
in minds which love God, and in men who practice holiness, 
from whom he gladly receives the very cheapest things (in 
sacrifice) in preference to the most costly. * * 

The lawgiver says in effect : " God, O mind of man ! 
demands nothing of you which is either oppressive or difficult, 
or uncertain, but only such things as are very simple and easy. 
And these are to love him as a benefactor ; and if you fail to do 
so, at all events to fear him as your Governor and Lord, and 
to enter zealously upon all the paths which may please him, 
and to serve him in no careless or superficial manner, but with 
one's whole soul thoroughly filled with God-loving sentiments, 
and to cleave to his commandments, and to honor justice. " 

* * But those men are to be pitied, and are altogether 
miserable, who have never banqueted on the labors of virtue > 
and they have remained to the end, the most miserable of all 
men who have been always ignorant of the taste of moral 
excellence, when it was in their power to have feasted on, and 
luxuriated among, justice and equality. But these men are 
uncircumcised in their hearts, as the law expresses it. * * 

Of Courage. 

I now proceed to speak of courage, not meaning that war- 
like and frantic delirium, with passion as its counsellor, which 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



85 



the generality of men take for it, but knowledge. * * But 
then, as some men — who, always remaining in their own houses, 
while their bodies have been worn away either by long sick- 
ness, or old age, still being healthy and vigorous in the better 
part of their souls, and being full of high thoughts, and inspired 
with a braver and happier fortitude, never meddling with war- 
like weapons, even in their dreams, — nevertheless by their 
exposition and advocacy of wise counsels for the common 
advantage, have often re-established both the private affairs of 
individuals, and the prosperity of the country when in danger, 
putting forth unyielding and inflexible reasonings concerning 
what has been really expedient. These men are they who 
practice real courage, being studiers and practicers of wisdom. 
There is also no small number of other things in life very diffi- 
cult to endure, such as poverty, want of reputation, and 
diseases, by which weak-spirited men are broken down, not 
being able to raise themselves at all through want of courage ; 
but those who are full of high thoughts and noble spirits rise 
up to struggle against these things with fortitude and exceeding 
vigor. 

The Virtuous alone Free. 

My former treatise was intended to prove that every 
wicked man was a slave, and that proposition I established 
fully by many natural and unquestionable arguments ; and this 
treatise is akin to that one, in some sort a twin to it, since it 
will proceed to show that every virtuous man is free. 

Now it is said that the most sacred sect of the Pythagore- 
ans, among many other excellent doctrines, taught this one 
also, that it was not well to proceed by the plain ordinary 
roads, — not meaning to urge us to walk among precipices, but 
intimating, by a figurative mode of speech, that we ought not, 
either in respect to our words or actions, to use only such as 
are ordinary and unchanged, — and all men who have studied 
philosophy in a genuine spirit, showing themselves obedient to 
this injunction, have looked upon it as a sentence, or rather 



86 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



a law, of equal weight with a divine oracle, and, departing from 
the common opinions of men, they have cut out for themselves 
a new and hitherto untraveled path, inaccessible to such as 
have no experience of wise maxims and doctrines, building 
up systems of ideas which no one who is not pure either 
can or may handle. When I speak of men not being pure, 
I mean those who have either been destitute of education, 
or else have tasted of it obliquely, and not in a straightfor- 
ward manner, changing the stamp of the beauty of wisdom so 
as to give an impression of the unsightliness of sophistry. 

Slavery is of two kinds — of the soul and of the body. * 
* * * For in real truth, that man alone is free who has 
God for his leader ; indeed, in my opinion, that man is even 
the ruler of all others, and has all the affairs of the world com- 
mitted to him, being, as it were, the viceroy of a great king, 
the mortal lieutenant of an immortal sovereign. * * * * 
If any one examine closely the matter (of freedom) he will 
see clearly that there is no one thing so nearly related to 
another as independence of action, on which account there 
are a great many things which stand in the way of the liberty 
of a wicked man : coveteousness of money, the desire of 
glory, the love of pleasure, and so on. But the virtuous man 
has absolutely no obstacle at all, since he rises up against, and 
resists, and overthrows, and tramples on, fear and cowardice, 
and pain, and all things of the kind, as if they were rivals 
defeated by him in the public games. For he has learned to 
disregard all the commands which those most unlawful masters 
of the soul seek to impose upon him, out of his admiration 
and desire for freedom, of which independence and sponta- 
neousness of action are the most essential and inalienable 
inheritance ; and by some persons the poet (Euripides) is 
praised who composed the iambic, 

" No man's a slave who does not fear to die," 

as having had an accurate idea of the consequences of such 
courage. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



S7 



Fragments from Lost or Unpublished Works. 

It is not possible with God that a wicked man should lose 
his good reward for a single good thing which he may have 
done among a number of evil actions; nor, on the other hand, 
that a good man should escape punishment and not suffer it, 
if, among many good actions, he has done wickedly in any- 
thing, for it is infallibly certain that God distributes everything 
according to a just weight and balance. 

— The mind is the witness, to each individual, of the 
things which they have planned in secret, and conscience is 
an incorruptible judge, and the most unerring of all judges. 

— No wicked man is rich, not even though he be the 
owner of all the mines in the world ; but all foolish men are 
poor. Every foolish man is straitened, being oppressed by 
coveteousness, and ambition, and love of pleasure, and things 
of that sort, which do not permit the mind to dwell at ease or 
enjoy plenty of room. 

■ — The wise man endeavors to secure quiet and leisure, and 
periods of rest from work, that he may devote himself peace- 
fully to mediations on divine matters. 

— If any one embraces all the virtues with earnestness and 
sobriety, he is a king, even though he may be in private 
station. 

■ — Say what is right, and at the time when it is right, and 
you will not hear what is not right. 

- — Every wise man is a friend of God. 

— There is nothing so opposite to and inconsistent with the 
most holy power of God as injustice. 

— The influx of evils agitates and disturbs the soul, envel- 
oping it in a giddiness which darkens its perceptions, and 
compels it to suffer that power of sight which by nature 
was pre-eminent, but which by habit has become blinded, to 
be obscured. 

— All the powers of God are winged, being always eager 
and striving for the higher path which leads to the Father. 



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— The man who lives in wickedness, bears about destruc- 
tion with him, since he has living with him that which is both 
treacherous, designing, and hostile to him. For the conscience 
of the wicked is alone a sufficient punishment to him, inflicting 
cowardice on his soul from its own inmost feelings, as it feared 
blows. 

— Good men are of more value than whole nations, since 
they support cities and constitutions as buttresses support 
large houses. 

— There is no place on earth more sacred than the mind 
of a wise man, while all the virtues hover around like so many- 
stars. 

— No one may so far yield to unreasonable folly as to 
boast that he has seen the invisible God. 

— As pillars support whole houses, so also do the divine 
powers support the whole world. 

— Justice, above all things, conduces to the safety, both of 
mankind, and of the parts of the world, earth, and heaven. 

■ — Every soul which piety fertilizes with its own mysteries 
is necessarily awake to all holy services, and eager for the con- 
templation of those things which are worth being seen, for this 
is the feeling of the soul at the great festival, and this is the 
true season of joy. 

— If you have a great deal of wealth, take care and do not 
be carried away by its overflow ; but endeavor to take hold of 
some dry ground, in order to establish your mind with proper 
firmness ; and this will be the proper exertion of justice and 
fairness. And if you have abundant supplies of all the things 
requisite for the indulgence of those passions which lie 
beneath the belly, be not carried away by such plenty, but 
oppose to them a saving degree of contentedness, taking in 
this way dry ground to stand on, instead of an absorbing 
quicksand. 

■ — The most perfect and greatest of all good things are 
usually the result of laborious exercise and energetic, vigorous 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



89 



labor. It is absurd for a man who is in pursuit of honors to 
flee from labors by which honors are acquired. 

— The extremity of happiness is to rest unchangeably and 
immovably on God alone. 

— When you are entreated to pardon offenses, pardon wil- 
lingly those who have offended against you, because indulgence 
given in requital for indulgence, and reconciliation with our 
fellow-servants, is a means of diverting the divine anger. 

— The virtuous man is a lover of his race, merciful and 
inclined to pardon, and never bears ill-will toward any man 
whatever, but thinks it right to surpass in doing good rather 
than in injuring. 

— Let us not fear the diseases which come upon us from 
without, but those offenses on which account diseases come, 
diseases of the soul, rather than of the body, 



MODERN JUDAISM. 

Church and State. 

Religion is universal ; theology is exclusive. Religion is 
humanitarian; theology is sectarian. Religion unites man- 
kind; theology divides it. Religion is love, broad and all- 
comprising as God's love ; theology preaches love and prac- 
tices bigotry. Religion looks to the moral worth of man ; 
theology to his creed and denomination. Religion teaches us, 
as Vice-President Colfax so beautifully expresses it, " The 
common fatherhood of God, and the common brotherhood of 
man;" theology teaches predestination, eternal damnation, and 
that we rather should fear the anger of God, than trust to His 
paternal love and mercy. Religion, therefore, is light and love, 
and virtue and peace, unadulterated and immaculate ; but the- 
ology is the apple of discord, which disunites and estranges us 
from one another. The sorrowful fact is that we have too 
6 



9 o 



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much of narrow-minded and narrow-hearted theology, and too 
little of the spirit of true religion. 

The same difference now exists between the modern State 
and Church. The State is humanitarian ; the Church secta- 
rian. The State, in conformity with the continuous advance- 
ment of the human race, must be progressive ; the Church, in 
accordance with its creed, must be stationary. The State 
looks after and watches over the interests of all its membere ; 
the Church looks first of all to its own interests and those of 
its communicants. The State advances and progresses as far 
as man is able to advance ; the Church must discourage any 
criticism that may sap the foundation of its doctrinal structure. 

It is quite an erroneous impression, a complete misrepre- 
sentation of facts, that the State is nothing but a national police 
system for the protection of persons and property. * * This 
definition is the mediaeval one, and reminds us of those times 
in which the Church assumed the government of all the political 
and spiritual interests of the world, and the State was nothing 
but its obedient executive. 

But the modern State is quite another organization. * * 
It says all men are created equal, and hence it breaks down all 
castes and privileges; erases all titles by "divine right," be 
they aristocratic or hierarchic, and recognizes but one govern- 
ment, established "by the people and for the people." The 
modern State says, man is entitled to liberty, and therefore 
grants freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and freedom of 
the press. The modern State says, all men are entitled to 
happiness, and therefore abolishes serfdom and slavery, and 
grants to every one free exercise of rights and powers, so long 
as they do not interfere with the rights of his fellow-men. The 
modern State says, every one has a right to worship his Creator 
according to his best knowledge, and his conscience, and there- 
fore does not meddle with religious affairs, and leaves them to 
the care and direction of the individual. Civil and religious 
liberty, in all their various ramifications, are the children of the 
modern State. These blessings, which are considered the 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



9* 



greatest boon of mankind, and the glory of modern civilization, 
were bestowed on the present generation by the State and not 
the Church. * * * The modern State, therefore, is not a 
national police force, but the noble representative of all those 
glorious ideas which distinguish our age and civilization from 
that of past centuries. 

The Church treats its votaries as minors, the State wants 
free and independent men. Sectarian schools educate sectarian 
pupils ; free schools educate freemen — citizens ; and hence the 
State is better fitted to advance the interests of humanity at 
large than the Church, and every true and marked progress has 
only been achieved since the State has emancipated itself from 
the Church, and become separated and divorced from it. 

And what State has laid down these humanitarian principles 
more clearly, more emphatically and unequivocally, than the 
United States, our God-blessed country ? 

Where is there a Constitution, and a Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, like that framed by the immortal men of 1776? * * 

Do not point to vile politicians and tricky agitators. There 
are sinners in the State, no less than in the Church. With all 
their vices and corruptions they cannot detract from the merit 
and sublimity of the modern, progressive State. They are but 
excressences of society, only to nourish for awhile ; their days 
are numbered; and when the people arouse, they will be 
scattered, and vanish like chaff before a whirlwind. * * 

We assert, with our old Rabbis, "that the good of all 
denominations will participate in the future bliss of Heaven." 

* * And we assert this, because we believe with Moses and 
Jesus, that the supreme command of all religion is : "Love 
thy fellow-man as thyself, " without distinction of race, or color, 
or creed. These words comprise all the law and the prophets, 
and this must be the corner-stone of all future religion. Hence 
it is our duty to see that justice be meted out to all ; that 
liberty be granted to all ; that the inalienable rights with which 
the Creator has endowed man be enjoyed by all; and that 



i)2 



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the old golden rule be observed by all : Do unto others as 
you wish to be done by. 

This is the relation which modern Judaism assumes toward 
the modern State, and especially towards the laws of our 
beloved country. Hence we have given up all idea of ever 
returning to Palestine and establishing there an independent 
nationality. * * Hence we have given up our sectarian 
schools, and send our children to the free schools ; for we wish 
to educate them as thorough Americans, from their childhood, 
to fraternize with their future fellow-citizens. — Rabbi Zilienthal t 
Cincinnati, Ohio. 

Ethics and Politics. — Reason. 

With the universal God and the universal standpoint, uni- 
versal ethics and politics, as the necessary sequences thereof, 
must have come ; and they did come in the brief words, "Love 
thy neighbor as thyself," which Confucius, Hillel, and Jesus 
expounded by the golden rule; and "God is king;" i.e., the 
absolute wisdom, and justice is the Sole Sovereign of the 
human race. In principle, nothing can be added thereto, 
nothing diminished thereof. If man exists only inasmuch as 
he is in God, in love, wisdom, and justice, and all else is 
momentary, temporal and perishable, then he truly lives only 
so far as he loves, thinks, and acts wisely and justly. If all 
men partake of the same divine nature, then all are of one 
nature : they are one. Hence the individual is not a unit, the 
race is. The individual cannot love himself, think and act 
wisely and justly to himself ; he can do all this to the race only 
of which he is a part Hence he can live only in love to the 
human race. Again, if the race is a unit, inasmuch as all par- 
take of the same divine nature, then none but God can be 
king, because he is the majesty, the centre of all excellencies 
diffused in the human family. If I must love my neighbor, 
how shall I tyrannize over him ? No man possesses absolute 
wisdom and justice. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



93 



So we have reached the ideals, the final object of historical 
development, as laid down in the Bible. The people of Israel, 
in the course of their history, went by all standpoints, from 
rude fetichism to the highest absolute theism ; from the bar- 
barous slaughtering of the Canaanites to the supreme law of 
humanity ; through all forms of religion, ethics, and politics, to 
the highest and universal standpoint in each. The Bible stories 
must be understood as phases of development, particular stand- 
points, temporized and localized, which must be divested of 
their specialties, to receive their respective positions in history, 
and their proper place in relation to the universal idea. If 
Joshua supposed God had commanded him or Moses to 
accomplish the extinction of the seven nations, he did so from 
a temporal and local standpoint, formed by the state of civil- 
ization and force of circumstances at the period. If the Jew 
saw in God the mere God of Israel or of Palestine, Paul saw 
Him in a son of God, and John in the Logos ; they temporized 
and localized the Deity, as those do in ethics who claim justice 
in heaven and on earth, only for themselves and their friends. 
All particular standpoints, all phases of development, are repre- 
sented in Israel's history ; and all of them must be passed 
through by the entire human family, to reach the ideals in 
religion, ethics, and politics, as set forth in our Bible. 

Who shall guide man in this path to perfection ? How are 
we to distinguish the universal from the temporal or local stand- 
point, God from the gods, justice from compacts of selfishness? 
History itself as little as the Bible can guide us in this matter, 
for they contain both the ideal, and the history of development 
towards it, the universal and all particular standpoints, truth 
and the various shades of aberrations. If the Bible is to guide, 
what are we to do with its immoral incidents, the unreasonable 
tales and myths, the local or temporal presentations of Deity ? 
The religious sentiment called faith cannot guide, for it is evi- 
dently uncertain. Whence the various and contradictory views 
of the Christian sects, all claiming the guidance of faith, if it 
is reliable? By faith, crusades were organized, inquisitions 



94 



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instituted, auto da fes celebrated, tens of thousands were 
massacred. 

The ethical sentiment, conscience, must guide, it may be 
maintained ; but this is also an unsafe guide. Conscience, too, 
has misguided, and does misguide individuals and nations. 
The conscience of those parents who drown their new-born 
daughers because they cannot afford to give them the proper 
education and outfit ; and of those barbarous sons who kill 
their feeble and aged parents, because they are burdensome to 
themselves and others ; the conscience of fanatics and enraged 
mobs, of despots and their obedient coadjutors, is human 
conscience. 

Reason, the understanding, is the guide which God has 
given us; the highest and last arbiter in all matters, human 
and divine. Reason is the supreme authority ; and there is 
no appeal from its decisions. By reason we distinguish cor- 
rectly the true from the false, right from wrong, the universal 
from the particular. Faith, conscience, history, and Bible 
must submit to reason This is the touchstone to distinguish 
gold from brass, the precious metal from the dross. Whatever 
cannot stand the test of reason is worthless, and to ba cast 
away. This was the case in all ages of history, and will be so 
forever. With the progress of reason, faith and conscience are 
purified, humanity is elevated, and the ethical feeling sanctified. 
Truth is the only Messiah. Reason, says a Jewish authority, 
is the angel (the mediator) which stands between God and 
man. Reason has redeemed the human family from barbarism, 
and will complete the work of redemption. If I speak of 
reason as the highest authority, I do not mean my reason or 
your reason; I mean reason itself, universal and eternal, in 
which and through which the human family is a unit, and God 
is revealed to man. Reason must distinguish the universal 
standpoint from the particular ones in the Bible and elsewhere. 
Truth is the seal of God. Reason is the connecting link of 
God and man, — like the rays of light that connect the earth 
with the sun. Therefore, science, the favorite mistress of 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 95 

reason, is the ally of religion and truth. Research, criticism, 
inquiry, and all other exertions of reason, are divinely appointed 
means for the progress of humanity to its lofty ideals of God, 
truth, and happiness. — Rabbi Isaac M. Wise, Cincinnati, Ohio. 



Fraternity — Religious Liberty — Education. 

Resolutions of Conference of Rabbis, Cleveland, Ohio, July 15, 1870. 

These resolves, laid before the Conference by Rabbi Lilien- 
thal, of Cincinnati, and approved by a select committee, were 
adopted unaiiinionsly, and engrossed and signed by all present : 

At a meeting of the Rabbis of various cities of the Union, 
held in the city of Cleveland, Ohio, from and after July 13, in 
consideration of the religious commotion now agitating the 
public mind in both hemispheres, in accordance with the prin- 
ciples of Judaism, it was unanimously declared : 

1. Because, with unshaken faith and firmness we believe 
in one indivisible and eternal God, we also believe in the 
common fatherhood of God, and the common brotherhood of 
men. 

2. We glory in the sublime doctrine of our religion, which 
teaches that the righteous of all nations, without distinction of 
creed, will enjoy eternal life and everlasting happiness. 

3. The divine command, the most sublime passage of the 
Bible, "Thou shalt love thy fellowman as thyself," extends to 
the entire human family, without distinction of either race or 
creed. 

4. Civil and religious liberty, and hence the separation of 
Church and State, are the inalienable rights of men, and we 
consider them to be the brightest gems in the Constitution of 
the United States. 

5. We love and revere this country as our home and 
fatherland for us and our children ; and therefore consider it 
our paramount duty to sustain and support the government; to 
favor by all means the system of free education, leaving reli- 
gious instruction to the care of the different denominations. 



9 6 



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6. We expect the universal elevation and fraternization of 
the human family to be achieved by the natural means of 
science, morality, justice, freedom and truth. 

Dr. J. Mayer, President, Cleveland, Ohio; Dr. M. Lilien- 
thal, Cincinnati, Ohio; Dr. Ad. Hubsh, New York; Dr. I. 
M. Wise, Cincinnati, Ohio ; Dr. H. S. Sormeshein, St. Louis, 
Mo. ; Dr. L. Kleeberg, Louisville, Ky. ; Dr. L. Adler, Chicago, 
111. ; Dr. S. Tuska, Memphis, Tenn. ; Dr. G. Kahsh, New- 
York ; Dr. M. Fluegel, Quincy, 111. ; G. M. Cohen, Cleveland, 
Ohio; A. L. Mayer, Richmond, Va.; Dr. L. Goldhammer, 
Cincinnati, Ohio. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



97 



CHAPTER VII. 



GREECE. 



ORPHEUS, .PYTHAGORAS, PLATO, Etc. 
One Being. 

There is One Unknown Being, prior to all beings, and 
exalted above all. He is the author of all things, even of the 
ethereal sphere, and of all things below it. He is Life, Coun- 
sel and Light, which all signify One Power, the same that drew 
all things visible and invisible, out of nothing. We will sing 
that eternal, wise, and all-perfect Love, which reduced chaos 
to order. 

The empyrean, the deep Tartarus, the earth, the ocean, the 
immortal gods and goddesses, all that is, that has been, or that 
will be, was originally contained in the fruitful bosom of Jupi- 
ter. He is the first and the last, the beginning and the end. 
He is the Primeval Father, the immortal virgin, the life, the 
cause, the energy of all things. There is One only Power, 
One only Lord, One Universal King. — Orphens ) B. C. 1200. 

One Soul, — and other Sayings. 

There is One Universal Soul, diffused through all things, — ■ 
eternal, invisible, unchangeable; in essence like truth, in sub- 
stance resembling light ; not to be represented by any image, 
to be comprehended only by the mind ; not as some conjec- 
ture, exterior to the world, but, in himself entire, pervading 
the universal sphere. 

Unity is the principle of all things, and from this unity 
went forth an infinite duality. 

The soul of man being between spirits who always con- 
template the Divine Essence, and those incapable of such 



9 8 



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contemplation, can raise itself to the one, or sink itself to the 
other. 

Truth is to be sought with a mind purified from the pas- 
sions of the body. Having overcome evil things, thou shalt 
experience the union of the immortal God with the mortal 
man. 

Man is perfected, first by conversing with the gods, which 
he can only do when he abstains from evil, and strives to 
resemble the divine nature; second, by doing good toothers, 
which is an imitation of the gods ; third, by leaving this mortal 
body. 

A man should never pray for anything for himself, because 
every one is ignorant of what is really good for him. 

Every man ought to speak and act with such integrity that 
no one would have reason to doubt his simple affirmation. 

Do what you believe to be right, whatever people think of 
you. 

It is either requisite to be silent or to say something better 
than silence. 

It is impossible that he can be free who is a slave to his 
passions. 

We should avoid and amputate by every possible artifice, 
by fire and sword, and all various contrivances ; from the body, 
disease ; from the soul, ignorance ; from the belly, luxury ; 
from a city, sedition ; from a house, discord ; and at the same 
time from all things, immoderation. 

It is better to live lying in the grass confiding in divinity 
and yourself, than to lie in a golden bed with purturbation. — • 
Pithagoras, B. C. S$6. 

Zeus and Divine Law. 

Greatest of the gods, God with many names, God ever-ruling, 

and ruling all things ! 
Zeus, origin of nature, governing the universe by law, 
All hail ! For it is right for mortals to address thee ; 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



99 



Since we are thy offspring, and we alone of all 
That live and creep on the earth have power of imitative 
speech. 

Therefore will I praise thee, and hymn forever thy power. 
Thee the wide heaven, which surrounds the earth, obeys ; 
Following where thou wilt, willingly obeying thy law. 
Thou holdest at thy service, in thy mighty hands, 
The two-edged, flaming, immortal thunderbolt, 
Before whose flash all nature trembles. 

Thou rulest in the common reason, which goes through all, 
And appears in all things, great and small, 
Which, filling all nature, is king of all existences. 
Nor without thee, O Deity, does anything happen in the world, 
From the ethereal pole to the great ocean, 
Except only the evil prepared by the senseless wicked. 
But thou also art able to bring to order that which is chaotic, 
Giving form to that which is formless, and making the discord- 
ant friendly ; 

So reducing all variety to unity, and even making good out of 
evil. 

Thus through all nature is one great law, 
Which only the wicked seek to disobey, — - 
Poor fools ! who long for happiness, 
But will not see nor hear the divine commands. 

\CleantheSy B. C. 260. 

The One Primitive Substance. 

The Eternal Living Being, most noble of all beings ; dis- 
tinct from matter, without extension or division, without parts 
or succession; who understands everything, and, continuing 
himself immovable, gives motion to all things, and enjoys in 
himself a perfect happiness, knowing and contemplating himself 
with infinite pleasure. * * * * * 

There are many inferior deities, but One Mover. All that 
is said of the human shape of those deities is mere fiction, 



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invented to instruct the common people, and secure their 
observance of good laws. A Spiritual Substance is the cause 
of the universe, and the source of all order and beauty, all 
motions, and all the forms we so much admire in it. All must 
be reduced to this One Primitive Substance, which governs in 
subordination to the First. * * * 

There is one Supreme Intelligence, who acts with order, 
proportion and design, the source of all that is good and just. 

After death, the soul continueth in the serial body till it is 
entirely purged from all angry and voluptuous passion ; then 
doth it put off, by a second death, the aerial body, as it did the 
terrestial body. Wherefore the ancients say there is another 
heavenly body always joined with the soul, which is immortal, 
luminous, and star-like. — Aristotle. 



Prayer of Socrates. 

O Beloved Pan, and all ye other Gods of the place, grant 
me to become beautiful in the inner man, and that whatever 
outward things I may have may be at peace with those within. 

May I deem the wise man rich, and may I have such a 
portion of gold as none but a prudent man can either bear or 
employ ! Do we need anything else, Phaedrus ? For myself 
I have prayed enough. 



PLATO. 



Wisdom and Self-knowledge. 

I mean that wisdom is the only science which is the science 
of itself and of the other sciences as well. * * 
Then the wise or temperate man, and he only, will know him- 
self, and be able to examine what he knows or does not know, 
and see what others know, and think that they know "and do 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



IOI 



really know ; and what they do not know, and fancy that they 
know, when they do not. No other person will be able to do 
this. And this is the state and virtue of wisdom, or temper- 
ance, and self-knowledge, which is just knowing what a man 
knows, and what he does not know. 

Justice and Reverence in all Men. 

Now man, having a share of the divine attributes, was at 
first the only one of the animals who had any gods, because he 
alone was of their kindred ; and he would raise altars and 
images of them. He was not long in inventing language and 
names ; and he also constructed houses, and clothes, and shoes 
and beds, and drew sustenance from the earth. Thus pro- 
vided, mankind at first lived dispersed, and there were no cities. 
But the consequence was they were destroyed by wild beasts, 
for they were utterly weak in comparison of them, and their 
art was only sufficient to provide them with the means of life, 
and would not enable them to carry on war against the ani- 
mals : food they had, but not as yet any art of government, of 
which the art of war is a part. After awhile the desire of self- 
preservation gathered them into cities ; but when they were 
gathered together, having no art of government, they evil- 
entreated one another, and were again in process of dispersion 
and destruction. Zeus feared that the race would be exter- 
minated, and so he sent Hermes to them, bearing reverence 
and justice to be the ordering principles of cities and the bonds 
of friendship and conciliation. Hermes asked Zeus how he 
should impart justice and reverence among men : should 
he distribute them as the arts are distributed? that is to say, to 
a favored few only, — for one skilled individual has enough of 
medicine, or any other art, for many unskilled ones. Shall 
this be the manner in which I distribute justice and reverence 
among men, or shall I give them to all ? To all, said Zeus ; I 
should like them all to have a share ; for cities cannot exist if 
a few only share in the virtues, as in the arts. 



i : 2 



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Death and the After Life. — Socrates to his Friends 
and Judges, 

my judges — for you I may truly cull judges — I should 
like to tell you of a wonderful circumstance. Hitherto the 
farniliar oracle within me has constantly been in the habit of 
opposing me. even about trifles, if I was going to make a slip 
or error about anything ; and now. as you see. there has come 
upon me that which may be thought, and is generally believed 
to be. the last and worst evil. But the oracle made no sign of 
opposition, either as I was leaving my house and g : ktg out in 
the morning, or when I was going up into this court, or while 
I was speaking, at anything which I was going to say ; and vet 
I have often been stopped in the middle of a strewn, bat new 
in nothing I either said or did, touching this matter, has the 
oracle opposed me. What do I take to be the explanation of 
this? I will tell you. I regard this as a proof tha: what has 
happened to me is a good, and that those of us who think that 
death is an evil are in error. This is a great proof to me of 
what I am sawing, for the customary sign would surely have 
opposed me had I been going to evil and not to good- 
Let us reflect in another way. and we shall see tha: there 
is great reason to hope that death is a good, for one or two 
things : either death is a state of nothingness and utter uncon- 
sciousness, or. as men say, there is a change and migration of 
the seal from this world to another. INow if you sunnose that 
there is no consciousness, but to sleep like the sleep of him 
who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be 
an unspeakable gain. F:r if a person were to select the night 
in which his s.eep was undisturoed even by dreams, and were 
to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and 
then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed 
in the course o: his hie better and more pleasantly than this 
one. I think that any man. — I will not say a private man. bat 
even the great king. — will not rind many such cays or nights, 
when compared with the others. Now it death is like this, I 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



say that to die is gain ; for eternity is then only a single night. 
But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men 
say, all the dead are, what good, O my friends and judges, can 
be greater than this ? If, indeed, when the pilgrim arrives in 
the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice 
in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give 
judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and ^Eacus and 
Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in 
their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What 
would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and 
Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let 
me die again and again. I, too, shall have a wonderful interest 
in a place where I can converse with Palamedes, and Ajax the 
son of Telamon, and other heroes of old, who have suffered 
death through an unjust judgment; and there will be no small 
pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with 
theirs. Above all, I shall be able to continue my search into 
true and false knowledge ; as in this world, so also in that ; I 
shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is 
not. What would not a man give, O judges, to be able to 
examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition ; or Odys- 
seus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women too I 
What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them 
and asking them questions ! For in that world, they do not 
put a man to death for this ; certainly not. For besides being 
happier in that world than this, they will be immortal, if what 
is said be true. 

Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and 
know this of a truth : that no evil can happen to a good man, 
either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by 
the gods ; nor has my own approaching end happened by 
mere chance. But I see clearly that to die and be released 
was better for me ; and therefore the oracle gave no sign. For 
which reason, also, I am not angry with my accusers or my con- 
demned ; they have done me no harm, although neither of 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



hem meant to do me any good ; and for this I may gently 
blame them. 

Still I have a favor to ask of them. When my sons are 
grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them ; 
and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if 
they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about 
virtue ; or if they pretend to be something when they are really 
nothing ; then reprove them as I have reproved you, for not 
caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking 
they are something when they are really nothing. And if you 
do this, I and my sons will have received justice at your hands. 
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways — I to 
die, and you to live. Which is better, God only knows. 



Socrates on the Soul and the Body. 

For I am quite ready to acknowledge, Simmias and Cebes, 
that I ought to be grieved at death, if I were not persuaded 
that I am going to other gods who are wise and good (of this I 
am as certain as I can be of anything of the sort), and to men 
departed (though I am not so certain of this), who are better 
than those I leave behind ; and therefore I do not grieve as I 
might have done, for I have good hope that there is yet some- 
thing remaining for the dead, and as has been said of old, 
some far better thing for the good than for the evil. * * 4 
Moreover, if there is time and inclination towards philosophy, 
yet the body introduces a turmoil and confusion and fear into 
the course of speculation, and hinders us from seeing the truth; 
and all experience shows that if we would have pure knowl- 
edge of anything, we must be quit of the body, and the soul 
in herself must behold all things in themselves. Then, I sup- 
pose, that we shall attain that which we desire, and of which 
we say that we are lovers, and that is wisdom; not while we 
live, but after death, as the argument shows ; for if while in 
company with the body, the soul cannot have pure knowledge, 
one of two things seems to follow — either knowledge is not to 



BIBLE OF THE AGGS. 



be attained at all, or, if at all, after death. For then, and not 
till then, the soul will be in herself alone and without the 
body. In this present life I reckon that we make the nearest 
approach to knowledge when we have the least possible con- 
cern or interest in the body, and are not saturated with the 
bodily nature, but remain pure until the hour when God himself 
is pleased to release us. And then the foolishness of the 
body will be cleared away, and we shall be pure, and hold con- 
verse with other pure souls, and know of ourselves the clear 
light everywhere; and this is surely the light of truth. For no 
impure thing is allowed to approach the pure. * * 

" Then may we not say, Simmias, that if, as we are always 
repeating, there is an absolute beauty, and goodness, and 
essence in general, and to this which is now discovered to be a 
previous condition of our being, we refer all our sensations, 
and with this compare them — assuming this to have a prior 
existence, but if not, there would be no force in the argument — ■ 
there can be no doubt that if these absolute ideas existed 
before we were born, then our souls must have existed before 
we were born, and if not the ideas, then not the souls. * * 
And were we not saying long ago that the soul, when using 
the body as an instrument of perception, that is to say, when 
using the sense of sight or hearing, or some other sense (for 
the meaning of perceiving through the body is perceiving 
through the senses), were we not saying that the soul too is 
then dragged by the body into the region of the changeable, 
and wanders and is confused ; the world spins round her, and 
she is like a drunkard when under their influence ? " 

"Very true." 

"But when returning into herself, she reflects ; then she 
passes into the realm of purity, and eternity, and immortality, 
and unchangeableness, which are her kindred, a id with them 
she ever lives, when she is by herself and is not let or hindered; 
then she ceases from her erring ways, and being in communion 
with the unchanging is unchanging. And this state of the 
soul is called wisdom?" 
7 



io6 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



" That is well and truly said, Socrates," he replied. 

"And to which class is the soul more nearly alike and akin, 
as far as may be inferred from this argument, as well as from 
the preceding one?" 

" I think, Socrates, that, in the opinion of every one who 
follows the argument, the soul will be infinitely more like the 
unchangeable ; even the most stupid person will not deny that. " 

"And the body is more like the changing?" 

"Yes." 

" Yet once more consider the matter in this light : When 
the soul and the body are united, then nature orders the soul 
to rule and govern, and the body to obey and serve; now 
which of these two functions is akin to the divine? and which 
to the mortal ? Does not the divine appear to you to be that 
which naturally orders and rules, and the mortal that which is 
subject and servant?" 

"True." 

" And which does the soul resemble?" 

" The soul resembles the divine, and the body the mortal ; 
there can be no doubt of that, Socrates. " * * * 
"But then, O my friends," he (Socrates) said, "if the soul is 
really immortal, what care should be taken of her, not only in 
respect of the portion of time which is called life, but of 
eternity ! And the danger of neglecting her from this point of 
view does indeed appear to be awful. If death had only been 
the end of all, the wicked would have had a good bargain in 
dying, for they would have been happily quit not only of their 
body, but of their own evil together with their souls. But 
now, as the soul plainly appears to be immortal, there is no 
release or salvation from evil except the attainment of the 
highest virtue and wisdom. For the soul when on her progress 
to the world below takes nothing with her but nurture and 
education ; which are indeed said greatly to benefit or greatly 
to injure the departed, at the very beginning of his pilgrimage 
in the other world. " 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



I07 



No Escape for Evil Doers. 

" But, O my friends, you cannot easily convince mankind 
that they should pursue virtue or avoid vice, not for the reasons 
which the many give, in order, forsooth, that a man may seem 
to be good ; this is what they are always repeating, and this, in 
my judgment, is an old wives' fable. Let them hear the truth: 
In God is no unrighteousness at all, he is altogether righteous; 
and there is nothing more like him, than he of us who is the 
most righteous. And the true wisdom of men and their 
nothingness and cowardice, are nearly concerned with this. 
For to know this is true wisdom and manhood, and the igno- 
rance of this is too plainly folly and vice. All other kinds of 
wisdom or cunning, which seem only, such as the wisdom of 
politicians, or the wisdom of the arts, are coarse and vulgar. 
The unrighteous man, or the sayer and doer of unholy things, 
had far better not yield to the illusion that his roguery is clever- 
ness ; for men glory in their shame — they fancy that they hear 
others saying of them, 'these are not mere good-for-nothing 
persons, burdens on the earth, but such as men should be who 
mean to dwell safely in a state.' Let us tell them that they 
are all the more truly what they do not know that they are ; for 
they do not know the penalty of injustice, which above all 
things they ought to know ; nor stripes and death, as they sup- 
pose, which evil-doers often escape, but a penalty which cannot 
be escaped. * * * * * * 

There are two patterns set before them in nature : the one 
blessed and divine, the other godless and wretched ; and they 
do not see in their utter folly and infatuation, that they are 
growing like the one and unlike the other, by reason of their 
evil deeds ; and the penalty is that they lead a life answering 
to the pattern which they resemble. And if we tell them that 
unless they depart from their cunning, the place of innocence 
will not receive them after death ; and that here on earth, they 
will live ever in the likeness of their own evil selves, and with 
evil friends : when they hear this, they in their superior cunning 
will seem to be listening to fools, " * * * 



io8 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



The Divine Law. 

God, as the old tradition declares, holding in His hand the 
beginning, middle and end of all that is, moves according to 
his nature in a straight line towards the accomplishment of 
His end. Justice always follows Him, and is the punisher of 
those who fall short of the divine law. To that law, he who 
would be happy holds fast, and follows it in all humility and 
order. But he who is lifted up with pride, or money, or honor, or 
beauty, who has a soul hot with folly, and youth, and insolence, 
and thinks that he has no need of a guide or ruler, but is able 
himself to be the guide of others, — he, I say, is left deserted of 
God ; and being thus deserted, he takes to him others who are 
like himself, and dances about in wild confusion, and many 
think that he is a great man ; but in a short time he pays a 
penalty which justice cannot but approve, and is utterly 
destroyed, and his family and city with him. * * 

Honor to the Soul. 

Of all things which a man has, next to the gods, his soul 
is the most divine and most truly his own. * * Wherefore 
I am right in bidding every one next to the gods, who are our 
masters, and those who in order follow them, to honor his own 
soul, which every one seems to honor, but no one honors as he 
ought ; for honor is a divine good, and no evil thing is honor- 
able ; and he who thinks that he can honor the soul by word 
or gift, or any sort of compliance, not making her in any way 
better, seems to honor her, but honors her not at all. For 
example, every man, in his very boyhood, fancies that he is 
able to know everything, and thinks that he honors his soul by 
praising her, and he is very ready to let her do whatever she 
may like. But I mean to say that in acting thus he only 
injures his soul, and does not honor her; whereas, in our 
opinion, he ought to honor her as second only to the gods. 
Again, when a man thinks that others are to be blamed, and 
not himself, for the errors which he has committed, and the 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



I09 



many and great evils which befel him in consequence, and is 
always fancying himself to be exempt and innocent, he is under 
the idea that he is honoring his soul ; whereas the very reverse 
is the fact, for he is really injuring her. * * * 

Again, when any one prefers beauty to virtue, what is this 
but the real and utter dishonor of the soul ? For such a 
preference implies that the body is more honorable than the 
soul ; and this is false, for there is nothing of earthly birth 
which is more honorable than the heavenly, and he who thinks 
otherwise of the soul has no idea how greatly he undervalues 
this wonderful possession. Nor, again, when a person is willing, 
or not unwilling, to acquire dishonest gains, does he then 
honor his soul with gifts — far otherwise ; he sells her glory 
and honor for a small piece of gold ; but all the gold which is 
under or upon the earth, is not to be given in exchange for 
virtue. * * For no one, as I may say, ever considers 
that which is declared to be the greatest penalty of evil-doing, 
namely : to grow into the likeness of bad men, and growing 
like them, to fly from the conversation of the good, and be cut 
off from them, and cleave to and follow after the company of 
the bad. And he who is joined to them must do and suffer 
what such men by nature do and say to one another, which 
suffering is not justice but retribution ; for justice and the just 
are noble, whereas retribution is the suffering which waits upon 
injustice ; and whether a man escape or endure this, he is mis- 
erable : in the former case, because he is not cured ; in the 
latter, because he perishes in order that the rest of the world 
may be saved. 



Divine Justice. 

O youth or young man, who fancy that you are neglected 
by the gods, know that if you become worse you shall go to 
the worse souls, or if better to the better, and in every succes- 
sion of life and death you will do and suffer what like may 
fitly suffer at the hands of like. This is a divine justice, 



I IO 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



which neither you nor any other unfortunate will ever glory in 
escaping, and which the ordaining powers have specially 
ordained ; take good heed of them, for a day will come when 
they will take heed of you. If thou sayest : "I am small and 
will creep into the depths of the earth/' or, " I am high and 
will fly up to heaven," you are not so small or so high but that 
you shall pay the fitting penalty, either in the world below, or 
in some yet more savage place still, to which thou shalt be 
conveyed. 

This is also the explanation of the fate of those whom you 
saw, who had done unholy and evil deeds, and from small 
beginnings had become great; and you fancied that from being 
miserable they had become happy, and in their actions, as in 
a mirror, you seemed to see the universal neglect of the gods, 
not knowing how they make all things work together and 
contribute to the great whole. 

Prayer — The Divine Nature — The Just Man. 

Prayer is the ardent turning of the soul toward God; not to 
ask for any particular good, but for good itself; the universal 
supreme good. We often mistake what is pernicious and 
dangerous for what is useful and desirable. Therefore remain 
silent before the gods till they remove the clouds from thy 
eyes, and enable thee to see by their light, not what appears 
good to thyself, but what is really good. 

Whatever is beautiful is so merely by participation of the 
Supreme Beauty. All other beauty may increase, decay, 
change, or perish, but this is the same through all time. By 
raising our thoughts above all inferior beauties, we at length 
reach the Supreme Beauty, which is simple, pure and immu- 
table, without form, color, or human qualities. It is the 
splendor of the Divine image, it is Deity himself. Love of 
this Supreme Beauty renders a man divine. 

God provides for all things, the least as well as the greatest. 
He is the original life and force of all things, in the ethereal 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



Ill 



regions, upon the earth, and under the earth. He is the Being, 
the Unity, the Good; the same in the world of Intelligence 
that the sun is in the visible world. 

God is Truth, and Light is his shadow. 

What light and sight are in this visible world, truth and 
intelligence are in the real unchangeable world. 

The end and aim of all things should be to attain to the 
First Good ; of whom the sun is the type, and the material 
world, with its host of ministering spirits, is but the manifesta- 
tion and the shadow. 

The perfectly just man would be he who should love justice 
for its own sake, not for the honors or advantages that attend; 
who would be willing to pass for unjust while he practiced the 
most exact justice ; who would not suffer himself to be moved 
by disgrace or distress, but would continue steadfast in the 
love of justice, not because it is pleasant, but because it is 
right.* 

* Plato was born B. C. 429. The new and admirable translation of Professor Jowitt 
has been followed, except in the last page — the pages and articles not being given, for 
brevity's sake. 



112 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



CHAPTER VIII. 



ROME.* 



THOUGHTS OF MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS. 



His Teachers. 

From my grandfather Verus I learned good morals and the 
government of my temper. 

From the reputation and remembrance of my father, mod- 
esty and a manly character. 

From my mother, piety and beneficence, and abstinence, 
not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts ; and 
further, simplicity in my way of living, far removed from the 
habits of the rich. * * * 

From Diognetus, not to busy myself about trifling things, 
and not to give credit to what was said by miracle-workers and 
jugglers about incantations and the driving away of demons 
and such things. 

From Apollonius I learned freedom of will and undeviating 
steadiness of purpose ; and to look to nothing else, not even 
for a moment, except to reason ; and to be always the same, 
in sharp pains, on the occasion of the loss of a child, and in 
long illness; and to see clearly in a living example that the 
same man can be both most resolute and yielding, and not 
peevish in giving his instruction ; and to have had before my 
eyes a man who clearly considered his experience and his skill 
in expounding philosophical principles as the smallest of his 
merits. And from him I learned how to receive from friends 
what are esteemed favors, without being either humbled by 
them, or letting them pass unnoticed. 

* See Appendix F. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



Right Living. 

Labor not unwillingly, nor without regard to the common 
interest, nor without due consideration, nor with distraction; 
nor let studied ornament set off thy thoughts, and be not either 
a man of many words, or busy about too many things. And 
further, let the Deity which is in thee be the guardian of a 
living being, manly and of ripe age, who has taken his post 
like a man waiting for the signal which summons him from life, 
and ready to go, having need neither of oath nor any man's 
testimony. Be cheerful also, and seek not external help nor 
the tranquility which others give. A man must stand erect, not 
be kept erect by others. 

Never value anything as profitable to thyself which shall 
compel thee to break thy promise, to lose thy self-respect, to 
hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to act the hypocrite, to 
desire anything which needs walls and curtains : for he who 
has preferred to everything else his own intelligence, and the 
demon within him and the worship of its excellence, acts 
no tragic part, does not groan, will not need either solitude or 
much company, and, what is chief of all, he will live without 
either pursuing or flying from life ; but whether for a longer 
or a shorter time he shall have the soul inclosed in the body, 
he cares not at all : for even if he must depart immediately, he 
will go as readily as if he were going to do anything else 
which can be done with decency and order ; taking care of 
this only all through life, that his thoughts turn not away from 
anything which belongs to an intelligent animal and a member 
of a civil community. 

In the mind of one who is chastened and purified thou 
wilt find no corrupt matter, nor impurity, nor any sore skinned 
over. Nor is his life incomplete when fate overtakes him, as 
one may say of an actor who leaves the stage before ending 
and finishing the play. Besides, there is in him nothing ser- 
vile, nor affected, nor too closely bound to other things, nor 
yet detached from other things, nothing worthy of blame, 
nothing which seeks a hiding-place. * * * 



ii 4 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



If thou workest at that which is before thee, following right 
reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything 
else to distract thee, but keeping thy divine part pure, as if 
thou shouldst be bound to give it back immediately; if thou 
holdest to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied 
with thy present activity according to nature, and with heroic 
truth in every word and sound which thou utterest, thou wilt 
live happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this. 



DISCOURSES OF EPICTETUS. 
Kindred to God and its Consequences. 

If what philosophers say of the kindred between God and 
men be true, what has any one to do, but like Socrates, when 
he is asked what countryman he is, never to say that he is a 
citizen of Athens, or of Corinth, but of the world ? For why 
do you say that you are of Athens : and not of that corner 
only, where that paltry body of yours was laid at its birth ? Is 
it not, evidently, from what is principal, and comprehends not 
only that corner, and your whole house, but the general extent 
of the country, from which your pedigree is derived down to 
you, that you call yourself an Athenian, or a Corinthian? Why 
may not he then, who understands the administration of the 
world, and has learned that the greatest, and most principal, 
and comprehensive of all things, is this system, composed of 
Men and God ! and that from him the seeds of being are 
descended, not only to my father or grandfather, but to all 
things that are produced and born on earth, — and especially to 
rational natures, as they alone are qualified to partake of a 
communication with the Deity, being connected with him by 
Reason — why may not such a one call himself a citizen of 
the world? Why not a son of God? And why shall he fear 
anything that happens among men ? Shall kindred to Caesar, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



or any other of the great at Rome, enable a man to live 
secure, above contempt, and void of all fear whatever ; and 
shall not the having God for our Maker and Father, and Guar' 
dian, free us from griefs and terrors ? 

The Essence of Good. 

God is beneficial. Good is also beneficial. It should 
seem, then, that where the Essence of God is, there too is the 
Essence of Good. What then is the Essence of God? Flesh? 
By no means. An Estate ? Fame ? — By no means. Intelli- 
gence ? Knowledge ? Right Reason ? — Certainly. Here then, 
without more ado, seek the Essence of Good. For do you 
seek it in a plant ? No. Or in a brute ? No. If then you 
seek it only in a rational subject, why do you seek it anywhere 
but in what is distinct from irrationals ? Plants have not the 
use of the appearances of things ; and therefore you do not 
apply the term of Good to them. Good, then, requires the 
use of these appearances. And nothing else ? If so, you may 
say, that good and happiness, and unhappiness, belong to mere 
animals. But this you do not say, and you are right. * * 
What then ? Are not these likewise the works of the gods ? 
They are : but not Principals, nor Parts of the gods. But you 
are a Principal. You are a distinct portion of the Essence of 
God; and contain a certain part of him in yourself. Why then 
are you ignorant of your noble birth? Why do not you con- 
sider whence you came? Why do not you remember when 
you are eating, who you are who eat ; and whom you feed ? 
When you are in the company of women ; when you are con- 
versing ; when you are exercising ; when you are disputing ; 
do not you know that it is a God you feed ; a God you exer- 
cise ? You carry a God about with you, wretch, and know 
nothing of it. Do you suppose I mean some God without you 
of gold or silver ? It is within yourself you carry him ; and 
profane him, without being sensible of it, by impure thoughts, 
and unclean actions. 



n6 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



Obedience and Trust in God. 

Lastly : to all other pleasures oppose that of being con- 
scious that you are obeying God ; and performing not in word, 
but in deed, the duty of a wise and good man. How great a 
thing is it to be able to say to yourself, "What others are now 
solemnly arguing in the schools, and seem to carry beyond 
probabilty, this I am actually performing. * * Seek not 
good from without: seek it in yourselves, or you will never 
find it. For this reason, he now brings me hither, now sends 
me thither : shows me to mankind, poor, without authority, 
sick ; sends me to Gyaros ; leads me to prison : not that he 
hates me — Heaven forbid ! For who hates the best of his 
servants ? Nor.that he neglects me : for he doth not neglect 
any one of the smallest things ; but to exercise me, and make 
use of me as a witness to others. Appointed to such a service, 
do I still care where I am, or with whom, or what is said of 
me, instead of being wholly attentive to God, and to his orders 
and commands ? " 

Prayer Near Death. 

I would be found in the regulation of my own will ; how 
to render it undisturbed, unrestrained, uncompelled, free; that 
I might be able to say to God, — "Have I transgressed thy 
commands? Have I perverted the powers, the senses and 
instincts thou hast given me ? Have I ever censured thy dis- 
pensations ? " I have been sick, because it was thy pleasure, 
but willingly. I have been poor, because it was thy will, but 
with joy. I have not been in power, but with joy; and I have 
never desired power. Hast thou ever seen me saddened because 
of this ? Have I not always approached Thee with cheerful 
countenance? Is it thy pleasure that I depart from this 
assembly of living men, I go. I give Thee all thanks that 
thou hast thought me worthy to have a share in it with Thee ; 
to behold thy works, and join in comprehending thy adminis- 
tration. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



117 



MORALS OF SENECA. 
On Benefits. 

Let us be liberal then, after the example of our great Cre- 
ator, and give to others with the same consideration that he 
gives to us. * * * 

If there were not an ordering and an overruling Providence, 
how comes it that the universality of mankind should ever 
have so unanimously agreed in the madness of worshipping a 
power that can neither hear nor help us ? Some blessings are 
freely given us ; others upon our prayers are granted us ; and 
every day brings forth instances of great and seasonable mer- 
cies. There never was yet any man so insensible as not to 
feel, see, and understand a Deity in the ordinary methods of 
nature, though many have been so obstinately ungrateful as not 
to confess it ; nor is any man so wretched as not to be a par- 
taker in that divine bounty. * * 

All this, says Epicurus, we are to ascribe to Nature. And 
why not to God, I beseech ye ? as if they were not both of 
them one and the same power, working in the whole, and in 
every part of it. Or, if you call him the Almighty Jupiter, 
the Thunderer, the Creator and Preserver of us all, it comes 
to the same issue ; some will express him under the notion of 
fate; which is only a connection of causes, and himself the 
uppermost and original, upon which all the rest depend. The 
Stoics represent the several functions of the Almighty Power 
under several appellations. When they speak of him as the 
father and the fountain of all beings, they call him Bacchus ; 
and under the name of Hercules, they denote him to be inde- 
fatigable, and invincible and, in the contemplation of him in 
the reason, order, proportion, and wisdom of his proceedings, 
they call him Mercury/ so that which way soever they look, 
and under what name soever they couch, their meaning, they 
never fail of finding him ; for he is everywhere and fills his 
own work. 



n8 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



* * That which God himself does, we are sure is 
well done ; and we are no less sure, that for whatsoever he 
gives, he neither wants, expects, nor receives, anything in 
return ; so that the end of a benefit ought to be the advantage 
of the receiver ; and that must be our scope without any by- 
regard to ourselves. 

It does not divert the Almighty from being still gracious, 
though we proceed daily in the abuse of his bounties. How 
many are there that enjoy the comfort of the light that do not 
deserve it; that wish they had never been born! And yet 
Nature goes quietly on with her work, and allows them a being, 
even in despite of their unthankmlness. Such a knave, we 
cry, was better used than I : and the same complaint we extend 
to Providence itself. How many wicked men have good crops 
when better than themselves have their fruits blasted ! Such a 
man, we say, has treated me very ill. Why, what should we 
do, but that very thing which is done by God himself? that is 
to say, give to the ignorant and persevere to the wicked. All 
our ingratitude, we see, does not turn Providence from pouring 
down of benefits, even upon those that question whence they 
come. ***** 

He who preaches gratitude pleads the cause both of God 
and man ; for without it we can neither be sociable nor 
religious. 

Of a Happy Life. 

There is not anything in this world, perhaps, that is more 
talked of and less understood, than the business of a happy 
life. It is every man's wish and design ; and yet not one of a 
thousand that knows wherein that happiness consists. We live, 
however, in a blind and eager pursuit of it; and the more 
haste we make in a wrong way, the farther we are from our 
journey's end. Let us, therefore, first consider, "what it is we 
should be at;" and, secotidly, "which is the readiest way to 
compass it. " If we be right, we shall find every day how 
much we improve ; but if we either follow the cry or the track 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



II 9 



of people that are out of the way, we must expect to be misled, 
and to continue our days in wanderings and error. Where- 
fore it highly concerns us to take along with us a skillful 
guide ; for it is not in this, as in other voyages, where the high- 
way brings us to our place of repose ; or if a man should 
happen to be out, where the inhabitants might set him right 
again ; but on the contrary, the beaten road is here the most 
dangerous, and the people, instead of helping us, misguide us. 
Let us not, therefore, follow like beasts, but rather govern our- 
selves by reason than by example. It fares with us in human 
life as in a routed army ; one stumbles first, and then another 
falls upon him, and so they follow, one upon the neck of 
another, until the whole field comes to be but one heap of mis- 
carriages. And the mischief is, "that the number of the 
multitude carries it against truth and justice ;" so that we must 
leave the crowd, if we would be happy. For the question of 
a happy life is not to be decided by vote : nay, so far from it, 
that plurality of voices is still an argument of the wrong ; the 
common people find it easier to believe than to judge, and 
content themselves with what is usual, never examining whether 
it be good or not. By the common people is intended the man 
of title 2s well as the clouted shoe: for I do not distinguish them 
by the eye, but by the mind, which is the proper judge of the 
man. Worldly felicity, I know, makes the head giddy ; but if 
ever a man comes to himself again, he will confess, that "what- 
soever he has done, he wishes undone ; " and that "the things he 
feared were better than those he prayed for. " 

The true felicity of life is to be free from purturbations ; to 
understand our duties towards God and man; to enjoy the 
present without any anxious dependence upon the future. Not 
to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears, but to rest satis- 
fied with what we have, which is abundantly sufficient ; for he 
that is so, wants nothing. The great blessings of mankind are 
within us, and within our reach; but we shut our eyes, and 
like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we 
search for without finding it. "Tranquility is a certain equality 



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of mind which no condition of fortune can either exalt or 
depress. " Nothing can make it less : for it is the state of 
human perfection; it raises us as high as we can go, and 
makes every man his own supporter ; whereas he that is borne 
up by anything else may fall. 

He that judges aright, and perseveres in it, enjoys a per- 
petual calm ; he takes a true prospect of things ; he observes 
an order, measure, a decorum in all his actions ; he has a 
benevolence in his nature; he squares his life according to 
reason ; and draws to himself love and admiration. Without 
a certain and unchangeable judgment, all the rest is but fluc- 
tuation ; but " he that always wills and wills the same thing is 
undoubtedly in the right." Liberty and serenity of mind must 
necessarily ensue upon the mastering of those things which 
either allure or affright us; when, instead of those flashy 
pleasures (which even at the best are both vain and hurtful 
together), we shall find ourselves possessed of joys transport- 
ing and everlasting. It must be a sound mind that makes a 
happy man ; there must be a constancy in all conditions, a 
care for the things of this world, but without trouble ; and such 
an indifferency for the bounties of fortune, that either with 
them or without them we may live contentedly. There must 
be neither lamentation, nor quarreling, nor sloth, nor fear; for 
it makes a discord in a man's life. " He that fears, serves." 
The joy of a wise man stands firm without interruption; in all 
places, at all times and in all considerations, his thoughts are 
cheerful and quiet. As it never came in to him from without, 
so it will never leave ; but it is born within him, and inseparable 
from him. It is a solicitous life that is egged on with the hope 
of anything, though never so open and easy, nay, though 
a man should never suffer any sort of disappointment. I do 
not speak this either as a bar to the fair enjoyment of lawful 
pleasures, or to the gentle flatteries of reasonable expectations ; 
but on the contrary, I would have men to be always in good 
humor, provided that it arises from their own souls, and be 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



121 



cherished in their own breasts. Other delights are trivial ; they 
may smooth the brow, but they do not fill and affect the heart. 

"True joy is a serene and sober motion/' and they are mis- 
erably out, that take laughing for rejoicing. The seat of it is 
within, and there is no cheerfulness like the resolution of a 
brave mind, that has fortune under his feet. He that can look 
death in the face, and bid it welcome, open his door to pov- 
erty, and bridle his appetite, this is the man whom Providence 
has established in the possession of inviolable delights. The 
pleasures of the vulgar are ungrounded, thin, and superficial ; 
but the others are solid and eternal. As the body itself is rather 
a necessary thing, than a great, so the comforts of it are but 
temporary and vain. Besides that, without extraordinary mod- 
eration, their end is only pain and repentance ; whereas, a 
peaceful conscience, honest thoughts, virtuous actions, and an 
indifference for casual events, are blessings without end, satiety, 
or measure. This consummated state of felicity is only a sub- 
mission to the dictates of right nature ; the foundation of it 
is wisdom and virtue — the knowledge of what we ought to do, 
and the conformity of the will to that knowledge. 



Of Virtue. 

Virtue is the only immortal thing which belongs to mor- 
tality ; it is an invincible greatness of mind, not to be elevated 
or dejected with good or ill fortune. It is sociable and gentle, 
free, steady and fearless; content within itself; full of inex- 
haustible delights ; and it is valued for itself. One may be a 
good physician, a good governor, a good grammarian, without 
being a good man ; so that all things from without are only 
accessories : for the seat of it is a pure and holy mind. * * 
If one could but see the mind of a good man, as it is illus- 
trated with virtue; the beauty and majesty of it, which is a 
dignity not so much as to be thought of without love and ven- 
eration; would not a man bless himself at the sight of such an 
object, as at the encounter of some supernatural power? A 
8 



122 



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power so miraculous, that is a kind of charm upon the souls 
of those that are truly affected with it. There is so wonderful 
a grace and authority in it, that even the worst of men approve 
it, and set up for the reputation of being accounted virtuous 
themselves. 

Consolations Against Death. 

This life is only a prelude to eternity, where we are to 
expect another original, and another state of things ; we have 
no prospect of heaven here but at a distance ; let us therefore 
expect our last and decretory hour with courage. The last (I 
say) to our bodies, but not to our minds : our luggage we leave 
behind us, and return as naked out of the world as we came 
into it. The day which we fear as our last is but the birth-day 
of our eternity ; and it is the only way to it. So that what 
we fear as a rock, proves to be but a port, in many cases to be 
desired, never to be refused ; and he that dies young has only 
made a quick voyage of it. Some are becalmed, others cut it 
away before the wind ; and we live just as we sail : first, we 
rub our childhood out of sight ; our youth next ; and then our 
middle age; after that follows old age and brings us to the 
common end of mankind. 

To suffer death is but the law of nature ; and it is a great 
comfort that it can be done but once ; in the very convulsions 
of it, we have this consolation, that our pain is near an end, 
and that it frees us from all the miseries of life. What it is we 
know not, and it were rash to condemn what we do not under- 
stand ; but this we presume, either that we shall pass out of 
this into a better life, where we shall live with tranquility and 
splendor in diviner mansions, or else return to our first prin- 
ciples, free from the sense of any inconveniences. There is 
nothing immortal nor many things lasting ; but by divers ways 
everything comes to an end. What an arrogance is it then, 
when the world itself stands condemned to a dissolution, that 
man alone should expect to live forever ! It is unjust not to 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



123 



allow unto the giver the power of disposing of his own bounty, 
and a folly only to value the present. Death is as much a 
debt as money, and life is but a journey towards it : some dis- 
patch it sooner, others later, but we must all have the same 
period. It is the care of a wise and good man to look to his 
manners and actions ; and rather how well he lives, than how 
long : for to die sooner or later is not the business ; but to die 
well or ill : for " death brings us to immortality. " That death 
which we so much dread and decline is not the determination, 
but the intermission of a life which will return again. 



124 



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CHAPTER IX. 



NEW TESTAMENT. 



JESUS AND PAUL. 
The Sermon on the Mount. 

And seeing the multitudes he went up into a mountain ; 

and when he was set, his disciples came unto him. 

And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying : 
Blessed are the poor in spirit ; for theirs is the kingdom of 

heaven. 

Blessed are they that mourn ; for they shall be comforted. 

Blessed are the meek ; for they shall inherit the earth. 

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteous- 
ness ; for they shall be filled. 

Blessed are the merciful ; for they shall obtain mercy. 

Blessed are the pure in heart ; for they shall see God. 

Blessed are the peace-makers ; for they shall be called the 
children of God. 

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' 
sake ; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute 
you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for 
my sake. 

B.ejoice, and be exceeding glad ; for great is your reward 
in heaven : for so persecuted they the prophets which were 
before you. * * * 

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your 
good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. 

Ye have that it hath been said, An eye for an eye and a 
tooth for a tooth. 

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil ; but whosoever 
shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



And if a man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy 
coat, let him have thy cloak also. 

And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him 
twain. 

Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would 
borrow of thee, turn not thou away. 

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor and hate thine enemy : 

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that 
curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them 
ivhich despitefully use you and persecute you ; 

That ye may be the children of your Father which art in 
heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the 
good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. 

For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye ? 
do not even the publicans so ? 

And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than 
others ? do not even the publicans so ? 

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which art in 
heaven is perfect. * * 

And when thou prayest thou shalt not be as the hypocrites 
are : for they love to pray standing in the synagogues, and the 
corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily 
I say unto you, They have their reward. 

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and 
when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in 
secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee 
openly. 

But when ye pray use not vain repetitions as the heathen 
do ; for they think they shall be heard for their much speaking. 

Be not ye therefore like unto them ; for your Father knoweth 
what things ye have need of before ye ask him. * * 

Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should 
do to you, do ye even so to them ; for this is the law and the 
prophets. — jfesus. 



126 



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Charity — or Love. 

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, 
and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a 
tinkling cymbal. 

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand 
all mysteries, and all knowledge ; and though I have all faith, 
so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am 
nothing. 

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and 
though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it 
profiteth me nothing. 

Charity suffereth long, and is kind ; charity envieth not ; 
charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. 

Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is 
not easily provoked, thinketh no evil ; 

Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ; 

Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, 
endureth all things. 

Charity never faileth; but whether there be prophecies 
they shall fail; whether there be tongues they shall cease; 
whether there be knowledge it shall vanish away. 

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. 

But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is 
in part shall be done away. 

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a 
child, I thought as a child : but when I became a man, I put 
away childish things. 

For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to 
face : now I. know in part ; but then shall I know even as also 
I am known. 

And now abideth faith, hope, and charity, these three ; but 
the greatest of these is charity. — Paul. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



I2 7 



CHAPTER X. 

AL KORAN. 

PRECEPTS OF MOHAMMED. 
Extracts. 

The pious is he who believeth in God, and who giveth his 
money to the needy. Those who perform their covenant with 
men in adversity (or excessive poverty) and affliction or disease, 
and do what is right (according to God's law) shall have their 
reward. 

— The service of God is the similitude of a grain that hath 
produced seven ears — in each ear, a hundred grains. 

— A kind speech, and forgiveness, are better than alms 
which harm or reproach followeth. 

— Turn away evil by that which is better (as anger by 
patience, and ignorance by mildness, and evil conduct by for- 
giveness), and lo ! he between whom and thyself was enmity 
shall become as though he were a warm friend; but none is 
endowed with this disposition except those who have been 
patient, and none except him who hath great good fortune. 

— Verily, God commandeth justice and the doing of good, 
and the giving unto the relation; and he forbiddeth wicked- 
ness and iniquity and oppression. He admonisheth you that 
you may reflect. 

— Give the orphans when they come of age their substance, 
and render them not in exchange bad for good, and devour 
not their substance by adding it to your own ; for this is a 
great sin. 

— Those who do evil ignorantly, and then repent speedily, 
to them will God be turned, for God is knowing and wise. 

— The honest women are obedient, careful in the absence 
of their husbands, for that God preserveth them by commit- 



128 CHAPTERS FROM THE 

ting them to the care and protection of the men. Seek not 
an occasion of quarrel against them. Show kindness unto 
parents, and relations, and orphans, and the poor, and your 
neighbor. Verily, God will not wrong any one, and if it be a 
good action, he will recompense it with a great reward. 

— Those who believe and do that which is right, we will 
bring into gardens watered by rivers ; therein shall they remain 
forever. 

— And ye also are allowed to marry free women, living 
chastely with them, neither committing fornication, nor taking 
them for concubines. Observe justice when ye appear as wit- 
nesses, and let not hatred toward any induce you to do wrong, 
but act justly. 

— Show kindness unto your parents, whether the one or both 
of them attain to old age with thee ; speak respectfully unto 
them, and submit to- behave humbly toward them, out of tender 
affection. 

— Give unto him who is of kin to you his due, and also to the 
poor and the traveler ; and waste not thy substance profusely. 
Let not thy hand be tied up to thy neck ; neither open it with 
an unbounded expansion, lest thou become worthy of repre- 
hension, and be reduced to poverty. 

Meddle not with the substance of the orphan, unless it be 
to improve it. Perform your covenant ; and give full measure, 
when you measure aught, and weigh with a just balance. 

Walk not proudly in the land. 

He who forgiveth, and is reconciled unto his enemy, shall 
receive his reward. 

— Whosoever resigneth himself unto God, being a worker 
of righteousness, taketh hold of a strong handle ; and unta 
God belongeth the issue of all things. 

— Whosoever desireth excellence ; unto God doth all excel, 
lence belong ; unto him ascendeth the good speech ; and the 
righteous work will he exalt. 

— Let not men laugh each other to scorn, who peradven- 
ture may be better than themselves; neither let women laugh 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



129 



other women to scorn, who may possibly be better than them- 
selves. Neither defame one another ; nor call one another by 
opprobrious epithets. 

— Consume not your wealth among yourselves in vain; nor 
present it to judges that ye may devour part of men's sub- 
stance unjustly. 

Arabic Inscription. 

Sir William Jones, in his voyage to India, found in the 
island of Johanna, a secluded speck in the Atlantic, off the 
coast of Africa, this inscription (in Arabic) above the door of 
a mosque : 

" The world was given us for our own edification, 

Not for the purpose of raising sumptuous buildings ; 

Life, for the discharge of moral and religious duties, 

Not for pleasurable indulgence ; 

Wealth, to be liberally bestowed, 

Not avariciously hoarded ; 

And learning, to produce good actions, 

Not empty disputes/' 

I have never seen in any Christian Church a nobler 
inscription ; and we, though the children of Christianity, can- 
not afford to ignore such teaching. — Higginson. 



I JO CHAPTERS FROM THE 



CHAPTER XL 



EUROPE. 



SCANDINAVIAN EDDAS.* 



Prose Eddas. 

The first and oldest of the Aesir is Odin. He governs all 
things, and although the other gods are powerful, they all serve 
and obey him, as children do their Father. Frigga is his wife. 
She foresees the destinies of men, but never reveals what is to 
come. * * * 

Odin is called Alfadir (All-father) because he chooses for 
his sons all those who fall in combat. * * The mightiest of 
the other gods is Thor, strongest of Gods and men. * * 

Baldur is the second son of Odin, * * the best, and all 
mankind are loud in his praise. So fair and dazzling is he in 
form and feature, that rays of light seem to issue from him. * 
Baldur is the mildest, the wisest, and most eloquent of all the 
Aesirs, yet such is his nature that the judgment he has pro- 
nounced can never be altered. * * 

The Alfadir liveth from all ages, governeth all realms, and 
swayeth all things, great and small. He hath formed heaven 
and earth, and the air, and all things thereunto belonging. 

And what is more, he hath made man, and given him a 
soul which shall live and never perish, though the body shall 
have mouldered away, or have been burned to ashes. And all 
that are righteous shall dwell with him in the place called 
Gimli, or Vingolf ; but the wicked shall go to hell, and thence 
to Niflhel, which is below, in the ninth world. 

* The Eddas are very old as songs and traditions, and the poetic Eddas were first col- 
lected in the eleventh century, by Saemund of Iceland, a Christian priest. The prose Eddas 
we»-e collected by a distinguished man of Iceland, Snorro Stureleson, about A. D. izoc. 
They contain the main ideas and traditions of Scandinavian religion which bore sway over 
Iceland, Sweden and Norway, the homes of the Norsemen. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



Voluspa — or Wisdom of Vala.* 
I command the devout attention of all noble souls, 
Of all the high and the low — of the race of Heimdall; 
I tell the doings of the All-Father, 
In the most ancient Sagas which come to my mind. 

There was an age in which Ymir lived, 
When was no sea, nor shore, nor salt waves; 
No earth below, nor heaven above, 
No yawning abyss and no grassy land. 

Till the sons of Bors lifted the dome of heaven, 
Aud created the vast Midgard (earth) below; 
Then the sun of the south rose above the mountains, 
And green grasses made the ground verdant. 

Then the sun of the south, companion of the moon, 
Held the horses of heaven with his right hand; 
The sun knew not what its course should be, 
The moon knew not what her power should be, 
The stars knew not where their places were. 

Then the councillors went into the hall of judgment, 

And the all-holy gods held a council, 

They gave names to the night and new moon ; 

They called to the morning and to midday, 

To the afternoon and evening, arranging the time. 

Then comes the mighty one to the council of the gods, 
He with strength from on high who guides all things, 
He decides the strife, he puts an end to struggle, 
He ordains eternal laws. 

Havamal, or Proverbs of "Eddas." 

The guest who enters 
Needs water, a towel, and hospitality. 
A kind reception secures a return 
In word and in deed. 



* The Vala was a prophetess of great power, held the same as the Fates, or Nomor, by 
many. 



132 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



Do not mock at a stranger 

Who comes trusting in your kindness ; 

For when he has warmed himself at your fire, 

He may easily prove a wise man. 

No worse companion can a man take on his journey 

Than drunkenness ; 

Not as good as many believe 

Is beer to the sons of men. 

The more one drinks the less he knows, 

And less power has he over himself. 

It is better to depart betimes, 

And not go too often to the same house ; 

Love tires and turns to sadness 

When one sits too often at another man's table. 

One's own house, though small, is better ; 
At home thou art the master. 
Two goats and a thatched roof 
Are better than begging. 

Two burning sticks placed together 
Will burn entirely away. 
Man grows bright by the side of man ; 
Alone, he remains stupid. 

The Logos, or Universal Reason. 

One article of our faith then is that Christ is the first 
begotten of God, and we have already proved him to be the 
very Logos (or universal reason) of which mankind are all par- 
takers ; and therefore those who live according to the Logos 
are Christians, notwithstanding they may pass with you for 
Atheists : Such among the Greeks were Socrates and Herak- 
leitos and the like; and such among the Barbarians were 
Abraham and Ananias, and Azarias and Elias, and many others. 
So, on the other side, those who have lived in former times in 
defiance of the Logos, or Reason, were evil and enemies to 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



133 



Christ ; but they who have made the Logos, or Reason, the 
rule of their action, are Christians and men without fear. — 
Justin Martyr, A. D. ijp. 

The True Religion. 

What is called the Christian religion has existed among the 
ancients, and was not absent from the beginning of the human 
race until Christ came in the flesh ; from which time the true 
religion which existed already, began to be called Christian. — 
St. Augustine, 4th Century. 

To the Self-Existent Light. 

Eternal God, Thou self-existent Light, which wast from the 
beginning, Maker of all creatures, Fountain of Mercy, Ocean 
of goodness, Thou fathomless Abyss of loving-kindness : suffer 
now the light of Thy countenance to arise upon us. Shine 
into our hearts, O Thou true Sun of Righteousness, and fill our 
souls with Thy beauty. Teach us evermore to think and talk of 
Thy judgments, and acknowledge Thee at every moment as our 
Lord and Benefactor. Direct according to Thy will the work of 
our hands, and lead us in the right way to do that which is 
pleasing in Thy sight ; so that through us, unworthy though we 
be, Thy holy Name may be glorified, the Name of the Father, 
the Son, and the Holy Ghost, to whom alone be praise, honor ? 
and glory, for ever and ever. Amen. — Basil, A. £>., jyg. 

Rest in God. 

Thee, O Lord, who fillest the heavens and the earth; Thee 
who upholdest all things by Thine ever present might; Thee, 
most merciful God, do I now invoke to descend into my soul, 
which Thou hast prepared for Thy reception by the desire 
which Thou hast breathed into it. Enter into it, and renew it 
in Thy likeness, that Thou mayest possess it and that I may 



134 



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have Thee as a seal upon my heart. Ere ever I cried to Thee, 
Thou, most Merciful, hadst called and sought me, that I might 
find Thee, and finding love Thee. Even so I sought and found 
Thee, Lord, and desire to love Thee. Increase my desire, and 
grant me what I ask. Bestow Thyself upon me, my God. 
Yield Thee unto me ; see, I love Thee, but too little ; strengthen 
my love; let love to Thee alone inflame my heart, and let the 
thought of Thee be all my joy. When my spirit aspires to 
Thee, and meditates on Thine unspeakable goodness, the 
burden of the flesh becomes less heavy, the tumult of thought 
is stilled, the weight of mortality is less oppressive. Then 
fain would my soul find wings, that she might rise in tireless 
flight ever upwards to Thy glorious throne, and there be filled 
with the refreshing solace that belongs to the citizens of heaven. 
Let my soul thus ever seek Thee, and never grow weary of 
seeking ; for he who seeketh Thee not is miserable, and he who 
refuses to live to Thee is dead. Therefore, O Thou full of 
compassion, do I commit and commend myself unto Thee, in 
Whom I am, and live, and know. May my soul be occupied 
with Thee only. Be Thou the goal of my pilgrimage, and my 
rest by the way. Let my soul take refuge from the crowding 
turmoil of worldly thoughts beneath the shadow of Thy wings; 
let my heart, this sea of restless waves, find peace in Thee, O 
God. Thou bounteous Giver of all good gifts, give to him who 
is weary refreshing food ; gather our distracted thoughts and 
powers into harmony again ; and set the prisoner free. See, he 
stands at thy door and knocks ; be it opened to him, that he 
may enter with a free step, and be quickened by Thee. For 
Thou art the Well-spring of Life, the Light of eternal Bright- 
ness, wherein the just live who love Thee. Be it unto me 
according to Thy word ! Amen. — St. Augustine, A. D. 350. 

Spiritual Life. 

The more a man is devoted to internal exercises, and 
advanced in singleness and simplicity of heart, the more sub- 
lime and diffusive will be his knowledge. A spirit pure, simple, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



135 



and constant, is not like Martha disturbed and troubled with 
the multiplicity of its employments, however great ; because, 
being inwardly at rest, it seeketh not its own glory in what it 
does, but "doeth all to the glory of God;" for there is no 
other cause of perplexity and disquiet, but an unsubdued will 
and unmortified affections. A holy and spiritual mind, by 
reducing them to the rule and standard of his own mind, 
becomes the master of all his outward acts ; he does not suffer 
himself to be led by them to the indulgence of inordinate affec- 
tions that terminate in self, but subjects them to the unalterable 
judgment of an illuminated and sanctified spirit. 

No conflict is so severe as his who labors to subdue him- 
self; but in this we must be continually engaged, if we would 
be strengthened in the inner man, and make real progress 
towards perfection. Indeed, the highest perfection we can 
attain in the present state is alloyed with much imperfection, 
and our best knowledge is obscured by the shades of ignorance; 
we "see through a glass darkly;" an humble knowledge of thy- 
self therefore, is a more certain way of leading thee to God than 
the most profound investigations of science. Science, however, 
or a proper knowledge of the things that belong to the present 
life, is so far from being blamable, considered in itself, that it 
is good and ordained of God ; but purity of conscience, and 
holiness of life, must ever be preferred before it ; and because 
men are more solicitous to learn much than to live well, they 
fall into error, and receive little or no benefit from their studies. 
But if the same diligence was exerted to eradicate vice and 
implant virtue, as is applied to the discussion of unprofitable 
questions and the "vain strife of words," so much daring 
wickedness would not be found among the common ranks of 
men, nor so much licentiousness disgrace those who are emi- 
nent for knowledge. Assuredly in the approaching day of 
universal judgment it will not be inquired what we have read, 
but what we have done; not how eloquently we have spoken, 
but how holily we have lived. 

He is truly good who hath great charity ; he is truly great 



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who is little in his own estimation, and rates as nothing, the 
summit of earthly honor ; he is truly wise who " counts all 
earthly things but as dross, that he may win Christ ; " and he 
is truly learned who hath learned to abandon his own will, and 
do the will of God. — Thomas A'Kempis, A. JD. 1380. 

For Kindness and Gentleness in Daily Life. 

Oh Thou gracious, gentle, and condescending God, Thou 
God of Peace, Father of mercy, God of all comfort : see, I 
lament before Thee the evil ot my heart ; I acknowledge that 
I am too much disposed to anger, jealousy, and revenge, to 
ambition and pride, which often give rise to discord and bitter 
feelings between me and others. Too often have I thus 
offended and grieved both Thee, O long-suffering Father, and 
my fellow-men. Oh forgive me this sin, and suffer me to par- 
take of the blessing which Thou hast promised to the peace- 
makers, who shall be called the children of God. 

Bestow on me, O Lord, a genial spirit and unwearied for- 
bearance; a mild, loving, patient heart; kindly looks and 
gestures ; pleasant, cordial speech and manners in the inter- 
course of daily life ; that I may give offense to none, nor mar 
the peace of my neighbors ; but as much as in me lies live in 
charity with all men. Oh, how excellent a gift is peace 1 how 
earnestly and repeatedly did our Saviour entreat His heavenly 
Father, that we might be one, even as He and the Father are 
one ! 

Therefore, O, Thou Supreme Love, unite our hearts in love 
to Thee. Soften, expand, enkindle all hard and narrow hearts. 
Enlighten them, that they may learn quickly to forgive and for- 
get all offenses, even as Thou, in Thy great kindness, art ready 
to forgive and forget, and dost soon lay aside Thy just anger. 
Let us prize peace more highly than the gratification of our 
own jealousy or grudges; let us be ready to give way and yield 
if so we may retain and guard this precious treasure ; for woe 
unto the country and nation, woe to the family or the individ- 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



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ual who loses God's gift of peace ! O God, resist the adversary 
who is the source of all discord, that he may not sow the evil 
seed of anger and disunion .among us. Check all disturbers of 
peace. Scatter the people who delight in war, and bring to 
naught the counsels that would raise strife, and are pregnant 
with calamity. Let us seek peace and ensue it, O Thou King 
of Peace! and may that peace which passeth understanding 
keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord.— y. 
Arndt, A. D. 1470. 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



Christian Wisdom and Moderation. 

Christian wisdom does not consist in seeking the company 
of those who are accounted wise and skillful ; and to make 
mention and talk of them; but to be occupied among the 
unwise, and those that lack understanding, that they may for- 
sake sin and foolishness, and embrace righteousness and sound 
understanding. Therefore it appeareth that Christian wisdom 
doth not consist in lofty looks, and seeing ourselves in things 
high and wise, as in a glass, but that we look to those things 
which are below, and mark that which is humble. He that 
knoweth these things, let him give thanks to God ; for by this 
knowledge he is able to prepare and apply himself to every- 
thing that shall take place in the world. But ye shall find 
many, yea, even among those that preach the gospel, who are 
not thus far enlightened. * * * 

The apostle now declareth, in a few words, how the 
believers ought to behave themselves toward men ; saying, Let 
your moderation be known unto all men. That is, be joyful 
toward God, always rejoicing in him ; but towards men, be of 
a patient mind, and so conduct ypurselves that ye be ready to 
9 



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suffer all things, and yield in everything, as much as possible, 
without transgressing the commands of God. 

We must endeavor to please all men in that which is good ; 
we must interpret aright the sayings of others, and accept the 
part which is good; that men may see that we are of those who 
would not disagree with any man for any cause whatever ; who 
are rich with the rich, and poor with the poor, rejoicing with 
those that rejoice, and weeping with those that weep ; in short, 
that we are all things to all men, that they may acknowledge 
that we are grievous to none, but agreeable, of a patient mind, 
and obedient in all things. We must be ready to permit, to 
take in good part, to obey, to give place, to do, to omit, to 
suffer all things for the benefit of our neighbor ; even though 
we suffer hindrance, loss of substance, name, and body thereby. 

Paul said, "lam made all things to all men, that I might 
by all means save some." We here see the patient and pliant 
mind, rightly observing those things which are here commanded. 
The apostle did sometimes eat and drink and do all things as 
a Jew ; sometimes with the Gentiles, he did all things as free 
from the law; for only faith in God, and love toward our 
neighbor, are necessarily required ; all other things are free ; 
and we may freely observe them for one man's sake, and omit 
them for the sake of another. 

We read in Matthew and Mark, that Christ suffered his 
disciples to break the Sabbath, and he himself did also break 
it, when the case so required; when it was otherwise he kept 
it, for which he gave this reason : "The Son of man is lord also 
of the Sabbath. " Which is as much as to say, the Sabbath is 
free, that thou may est break it for one maris sake and conve?iience 
and for tlie sake and co?ivenience of another thou may est keep it 

Martin Luther's Table Talk. 

— A man must needs be plunged in bitter affliction when 
in his heart he means good, and yet is not regarded. I can 
never get rid of these cogitations, wishing I had never begun 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



139 



this business with the pope. So, too, I desire myself rather 
dead than to hear or see God's Word and His servants con- 
temned ; but 'tis the frailty of our nature to be thus discouraged. 

— They who condemn the movement of anger against 
antagonists, are theologians who deal in mere speculations ; 
they play with words, and occupy themselves with subtleties, 
but when they are aroused, and take a real interest in the 
matter, they are touched sensibly. 

— " In quietness and confidence shall be your strength. " 
This sentence I expounded thus : If thou intendest to van- 
quish the greatest, the most abominable and wickedest enemy, 
who is able to do thee mischief both in body and soul, and 
against whom thou preparest all sorts of weapons, but canst 
not overcome ; then know that there is a sweet and loving 
physical herb to serve thee, named Patientia. 

Thou wilt say : How may I attain this physic ? Take unto 
thee faith, which says : no creature can do me mischief without 
the will of God. In case thou receivest hurt and mischief by 
thine enemy, this is done by the sweet and gracious will of God, 
in such sort that the enemy hurts himself a thousand times 
more than he does thee. Hence flows unto me, a Christian, 
the love which says : I will, instead of the evil which mine 
enemy does unto me, do him all the good I can ; I will heap 
coals of fire upon his head. This is the Christian armor and 
weapon, wherewith to beat and overcome those enemies that 
seem to be like huge mountains. In a word, love teaches to 
suffer and endure all things. 

— Patience is the most excellent of the virtues, and, in 
Sacred Writ, highly praised and recommended by the Holy 
Ghost. The learned heathen philosophers applaud it, but they 
do not know its genuine basis, being without the assistance of 
God. Epictetus, the wise and judicious Greek, said very well : 
" Suffer and abstain." 

— It was the custom of old, in burying the dead, to lay 
their heads towards the sun-rising, by reason of a spiritual 
mystery and signification therein manifested ; but this was not 



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an enforced law. So all laws and ceremonies should be free in 
the church, and not be done on compulsion, being things which 
neither justify nor condemn in the sight of God, but are 
observed merely for the sake of orderly discipline. 

— Cursed are all preachers that in the church aim at high 
and hard things, and, neglecting the saving health of the poor 
unlearned people, seek their own honor and praise, and there- 
with to please one or two ambitious persons. 

When I preach, I sink myself deep down. I regard neither 
Doctors nor Magistrates, of whom are here in this church 
above forty ; but I have an eye to the multitude of the young 
people, children, and servants, of whom are more than two 
thousand. I preach to those, directing myself to them that 
have need thereof. Will not the rest hear me ? The door 
stands open unto them; they may begone. I see that the 
ambition of preachers grows and increases ; this will do the 
utmost mischief in the church, and produce great disquietness 
and discord ; for they will needs teach high things touching 
matters of state, thereby aiming at praise and honor ; they will 
please the worldly wise, and meantime neglect the simple and 
common multitude. 

An upright, godly, and true preacher should direct his 
preaching to the poor, simple sort of people, like a mother 
that stills her child, dandles and plays with it, presenting it 
with milk from her own breast, and needing neither malmsey 
nor muscadin for it. In such sort should also preachers carry 
themselves, teaching and preaching plainly, that the simple and 
unlearned may conceive and comprehend, and retain what they 
say. When they come to me, to Melancthon, to Dr. Pomer, 
&c, let them show their cunning, how learned they be ; they 
shall be well put to their trumps. But to sprinkle out Hebrew, 
Greek, and Latin in their public sermons, savors merely of 
show, according with neither time nor place. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



141 



Outer and Inner Life — Renunciation. 

It is so provided and ordered that in proportion as man 
thinks and wills from heaven, his internal spiritual man is 
opened and formed ; it is opened into heaven, even unto the 
Lord, and it is formed according to those things which belong 
to heaven. 

But as man does not think and will from heaven, but from 
the world, his internal spiritual man is closed and his external 
man is opened into the world, and is formed according to those » 
things which belong to the world. 

For the body does nothing of itself, but is solely actuated 
by the spirit which is in it. The spirit, after its separation from 
the body, thinks, wills, speaks and acts as it did in the body. 

Of true renunciation of the world he says : 

To renounce the world is to love God and love the 
neighbor, and he loves the neighbor when he performs uses. 
In order therefore that a man receive the life of heaven, it is 
necessary that he should live in the world and engage in the 
various affairs of life. A life of abstraction from secular con- 
cerns is a life of thought and faith separate from a life of love 
and charity ; and in such a life the principle which prompts 
man to desire and promote the good of the neighbor must 
necessarily perish. When this is the case the spiritual life 
becomes like a house without foundations, which sinks grad- 
ually to the ground, or becomes full of clefts and chinks, or 
totters to its fall. — Emanuel Swedenborg. 

Intuition. 

With the birth of human souls, God imparts to them 
essential and original knowledge. The soul mirrors the uni- 
verse, and stands in personal relations to all things. She is 
illuminated with an inward light. But the tempest of the 
passions, the multitude of sensual impressions, dissipate and 
darken this light, its glory diffusing itself only when it burns 
alone, and peace and harmony prevail within us. When liber- 



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ated from all outward impressions, and desirous only of being 
guided by this light, then only do we rind pure and certain 
knowledge. In this state of concentration, the soul analyzes 
all objects upon which its attention rests; unites wholly with 
them, pierces through their substance, and penetrates even to 
God himself, by feeling His presence in the most important 
truths. — Von Helmont. 

Conscience the Divine Law Within. 

The Divine Law which tells of what is good and true and 
right, is written in the human heart. The conscience is a 
teacher. Let no one endeavor to excuse himself to the world, 
and still less to himself, or to the Omniscient, with the pretence 
that he knows not how to distinguish between right and wrong. 
If thou follow this holy voice within, that leads to good, thou 
wilt never willingly go astray, or knowingly do evil, and thou 
wilt ever enjoy internal self-contentment. Conscience is our 
earnest and just teacher, and only in following its limits and 
warnings canst thou find true happiness. Do not persuade 
thyself it is otherwise ; seek not by subtle reasoning to find the 
means of satisfying thy forbidden wishes and vicious tenden- 
cies, without violating thy sense of right and decency. Thy 
reasonings are false. It is an evil deed that thou art tempted 
to commit, and behind it lurks secret remorse. The con- 
science admits of no compromise. Thou thinkest thou canst 
bargain with it ; but weak man, thou art only bargaining with 
thine own shame. — Zschokke. 

Religion in Life. 

Many think it inexpedient to speak of religion, except on 
most solemn occasions, but none can forbid us to manifest the 
spirit of religion in a holy life. You may show its essence in 
every word and deed; even the most ordinary and trivial 
affairs of life need not be devoid of the expressions of a pious 
heart. Let the sacred feeling which governs your actions show 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



143 



that even in those common things which a profane mind passes 
with levity, the music of a lofty sentiment echoes in your heart ; 
let the majestic serenity with which you estimate the great 
and the small, prove that you refer everything to the Immut- 
able; let the cheerfulness with which you encounter every 
proof of your transitory nature, reveal to all that you live above 
time and the world ; let your easy and graceful self-denial prove 
how many of the bonds of egotism you have broken ; and let 
the ever quick and ready spirit from which neither what is rarest 
nor most common escapes, show with what unwearied ardor 
you seek for every trace or manifestation of the Godhead. If 
your whole life, and every movement of your outward and 
inward being, is thus guided by religion, perhaps the hearts of 
many will be touched by this mute language, and will open to 
the reception of that spirit which dwells in you. — Schleiermacher. 



Integrity. 

Be and continue poor, young man, while others around 
you grow rich by fraud and disloyalty; be without place or 
power, while others beg their way upward ; bear the pain of dis- 
appointed hopes, while others gain the accomplishment of 
theirs by flattery ; forego the gracious pressure of the hand, for 
which others cringe and crawl. Wrap yourself in your virtue, 
and seek a friend and your daily bread. If you have, in such 
a course, grown gray with unblemished honor, bless God and 
die, — Hei?izelma?t. 



Man Higher than His Dwelling Place. 

But man is higher than his dwelling place ; he looks up and 
folds the wings of his soul, and when the sixty minutes we call 
sixty years have passed, he takes flight, kindling as he rises, 
and the ashes of his feathers fall back to earth, and the 
unveiled soul, freed from its covering of clay, and pure as a 
note of music, ascends on high. Even amidst the dim shadows 



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of life he sees the mountains of the future world gilded with 
the morning rays of a sun which rises not here below. So the 
inhabitant of polar regions looks into the long night in which 
there is no sun-rise ; but at midnight he sees a bright light like 
the first rosy rays of dawn, gleaming on the highest mountain 
tops, and he thinks of his long summer in which it never sets. 
— yean PauL 

Maxims. 

■ — Philosophy can bake no bread, but she can procure for us 
God, Freedom, Immortality. Which then is most practical, 
Philosophy or Economy? 

— To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must 
first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it. 

■ — Man is the higher sense of our Planet; the star which 
connects it with the upper world ; the eye with which it turns 
towards heaven. 

— What is Nature ? An encyclopedical, systematic index, 
or plan of our Spirit. Why will we content us with a mere 
catalogue of our Treasures ? Let us contemplate them, and 
in all ways elaborate and use them. 

— There is but one temple in the world, and that is the 
body of man. Nothing is holier than this high form. Bend- 
ing before men is a reverence done to this revelation in the 
flesh. We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human 
body. 

— Plants are children of the earth ; we are children of the 
jEther. Nature is an Eolian harp, whose tones again are keys 
to higher strings in us. 

— Every beloved object is the centre of a Paradise. 

• — The first man is the first Spirit-Seer ; all appears to him 
as Spirit. What are children but first men ? The first gaze of 
the child is richer in significance than the forecasting of the 
Seer. 

— Man consists in Truth. If he exposes or betrays Truth, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



i4S 



he exposes or betrays himself. We speak not here of Lies, 
but of acting against conviction. 

— Can miracles work conviction ? Or is not real convic- 
tion, this highest function of our soul and personality, the only 
true God-announcing miracle ? 

— The Christian religion is especially remarkable, as it so 
decidedly lays claim to mere good will in man, to his essen- 
tial temper, and values this independently of culture and 
manifestation. 

— -Martyrs are spiritual heroes. Christ was the greatest 
martyr of our species; through him has martyrdom become 
infinitely significant and holy. 

— Every unpleasant feeling is a sign that I have become 
untrue to my resolutions ; Epictetus was not unhappy. Not 
chance, but I, am to blame for my sufferings. For virtue's 
sake I am here ; but if a man, for his task, forgets and sacri- 
fices all, why shouldst not thou? Expect injuries, for men are 
weak, and thou thyself doest such too often. Mollify thy heart 
by thinking of the sufferings of thy enemy ; think of him as 
one spiritually sick, who deserves sympathy. — Novalis. 

A Divine Hunger. 

We have a divine hunger, and this earth offers us only the 
food of cattle. The eternal hunger of man, the insatiability 
of his desires, ask another sort of nutriment. How can a 
great soul be happy here? Those who have been among 
mountains and are condemned to live on plains die of an incur- 
able nostalgia. It is because we have issued from above that 
we sigh for it, and that all music is to us a reminiscence of our 
home, a ranz-des-v aches to the exiled Swiss. An infinite love 
supposes an infinite object. If all the forests were pleasure 
parks, and all the isles were Fortunate Isles, and all the fields 
were Elysian, and all eyes were full of joy, oh ! then — But no: 
then the Infinite Being must have assured us that such felicity 
would be perpetual. But now that so many houses are houses 



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of mourning, so many fields are fields of battle, so many faces 
are pale, so many eyes are dulled with tears and closed ; when 
things are thus, how can the tomb be the end of all ? — Jean 
Paul. 

Immortality. 

Man must believe in immortality ; his belief corresponds 
with the wants of his nature. But if the philosopher tries to 
prove the soul's immortality from a legend, that is very weak, 
and says little to us. To me, the eternal existence of my soul 
is proved from my need of activity. If I work incessantly 
until my death, nature is pledged to give me another form of 
being, when the present can no longer sustain the spirit. — ■ 
Goethe. 

The Microcosm. 

Look within yourself, and you will find everything ; and 
rejoice that without there lies a Nature, that says yea and amen 
to all you have discovered in yourself. — Goethe. 

Gcethe and the Sparrows. 

A nest of young hedge-sparrows, with one of the old birds, 
had lately been brought me. I saw with admiration the bird 
not only continue to feed the young in my chamber, but, when 
set free through the window, return to take charge of them. 
Such parental love, superior to danger and imprisonment, 
moved me deeply, and I expressed my feelings to Goethe. 

" Simple man !" he replied, with a smile, "if you believed 
in God you would not wonder. 

" He from within lives through all Nature, rather, 
Nature and spirit fostering each other; 
So that what in Him lives, and moves, and is, 
Still feels His power, and owns itself still His." 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



147 



" Did not God inspire the bird with this all-powerful love 
for its young, and did not similar impulses pervade all animate 
nature, the world could not subsist. But even so is the divine 
energy everywhere diffused, and divine love everywhere active." 
— Eckermann. 



Nature — The Cosmos. 

In considering the study of physical phenomena, not 
merely in its bearings on the material wants of life, but in its 
general influence on the intellectual advancement of mankind, 
we find its noblest and most important result to be a knowl- 
edge of the chain of connection, by which all natural forces 
are linked together and made mutually dependent upon each 
other ; and it is the perception of these relations that exalts 
our views and ennobles our enjoyments. Such a result can, 
however, only be reaped as the fruit of observation and intel- 
lect, combined with the spirit of the age, in which are reflected 
all the varied phases of thought. He who can trace, through 
by-gone times, the stream of our knowledge to its primitive 
source, will learn from history how, for thousands of years, 
man has labored, amid the ever-recurring changes of form, to 
recognize the invariability of natural laws, and has thus by the 
force of mind gradually subdued a great portion of the physical 
world to his dominion. In interrogating the history of the 
past, we trace the mysterious course of ideas yielding the first 
glimmering perception of the same image of a Cosmos, or har- 
moniously ordered whole, which, dimly shadowed forth to the 
human mind in the primitive ages, is now fully revealed to the 
maturer intellect of mankind as the result of long and 
laborious observation. ***** 

Nature considered rationally, that is to say, submitted to 
the process of thought, is a unity in diversity of phenomena ; a 
harmony, blending together all created things, however dissim- 
ilar in form or attributes ; one great whole animated by the 
breath of life. ***** * 



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Mere communion with nature, mere contact with the free 
air, exercise a soothing yet strengthening influence on the wea- 
ried spirit, calm the storms of passion, and soften the heart 
when shaken by sorrow to its inmost depths. Everywhere, in 
every region of the globe, in every stage of intellectual culture, 
the same sources of enjoyment are alike vouchsafed to man. 
The earnest and solemn thoughts awakened by a communion 
with nature intuitively arise from a presentiment of the order 
and harmony pervading the whole universe, and from the con- 
trast we draw between the narrow limits of our own existence 
and the image of infinity revealed on every side, whether we 
look upward to the starry vault of heaven, scan the far-stretch- 
ing plain before us, or seek to trace the dim horizon across the 
vast expanse of the ocean. — A. Von Hw?iboldt. 

The City of the Gods in Man's Being. 

Magnificent ! "The City of the Gods" 

I fain would see ! It actually stands ; 

But mystical and secret as a dream ! 

For lo ! the head of every little child 

Reveals a palace, one divinely built — • 

Reveals a new original world just made, 

Such world as never yet was seen by man, 

Such world as never came to human ears. 

The child's eye feasts upon the universe, 

And whatsoever charms and pleases it, 

It draws into the mystic viewless dome ; 

Like bees the thoughts fly out from it for sweets, 

And, heavy-laden, bring their treasures home ; 

They gather thoughts themselves, which they extract 

From stars, and from the clouds, and from the flowers, 

And like the blue sky, broad and glistening, 

Soon their own heavenly temple rears its arch, 

And its own shining sun it hangs therein, 

And its own beaming moon ; and days and nights, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



I 



Spring, summer, autumn, winter, in their pomp, 

Move round therein, with new peculiar grace, 

Real, and nowhere else to him exist. 

A goddess too the master takes to him, 

And sends out infant gods before the door ! 

Of them, each little childish head shines forth 

A new, original, and glorious palace, 

Full of all treasures, all delight and bliss ! 

And so, millions of houses come to be 

Crowded with suns, and moons, and all things fair, 

So a whole city of spirits comes to be ! 

Does this sound like a fable ? But, dear soul, 

Not greatly, not admiringly enough 

Canst thou e'er think of "being" — of the Master 

Who founded this full city of the gods ! 

What were sublimer, rarer, and more blest 

Than all men's daily, homely, common life ! 

What can be lovelier than to be a man ! 

What holier than the culture and the love 

That open to dim sense its heavenly house. 

Leopold Schefer. 

Exaltation needed for Sacrifice. 

The mount of sacrifice must always be 
The mount of vision — he who would renounce 
Must rise to the great realms of the pure spirit, 
The godlike, the immortal, and the good. 

L. Schefer. 

Worth of Great Souls. 

There are, at all times, but a few great hearts 
Who clearly understand the world, and, clearly 
Distinguishing the true and good therein, 
Clearly reject and hate the bad and false. 
Esteeming beauty as a holy thing, 



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They lift it up before the people's eyes 

(As Moses did his magic brazen serpent), 

To make them well thereby ; their love becomes 

The love of many ; what they hate influences 

The people's hate ; forever reprobate 

Is that which the great heart hath reprobated. 

Z. Schefer. 

Respect for Woman Tests Man. 

So much as one holds woman in esteem, 
Purely or basely as he deals with love, 
So much is his regard for honor, or 
So little ; such the honor he receives ! 
Who not himself respects, honors not woman, 
Who does not honor woman, knows he love ? 
Who knows not love can he know honor then ? 
Who knows not honor what has he beside ? 

L. Schefer, 

Daily Faults. 

Never let us be discouraged with ourselves ; it is not when 
we are conscious of our faults that we are the most wicked ; on 
the contrary we are less so. We see by a brighter light, and 
let us remember for our consolation, that we never perceive 
our sins till we begin to cure them. We must neither flatter 
nor be impatient with ourselves, in the correction of our faults. 
Despondency is not a state of humility ; on the contrary it is 
the vexation and despair of a cowardly pride — nothing is 
worse ; whether we stumble or whether we fall, we must only 
think of rising again and going on in our course. Our faults 
may be useful to us, if they cure us of a vain confidence in our- 
selves, and do not deprive us of our humble and salutary con- 
fidence in God. He never makes us feel our weakness but 
that we may be led to seek strength from him. What is invol- 
untary should not trouble us ; but the great thing is, never to 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



act against the light within us, and to desire to follow where 
God would lead us. — Fenelon. 

The Law of Nature. 
What is the law of Nature ? 

It is the constant and regular order of facts by which God 
governs the universe ; an order which his wisdom presents to 
the senses and the reason of men, as an equal and common 
rule for their actions, to guide them, without distinction of 
country or sect, towards perfection and happiness. 

The definition of law is, "An order or prohibition to act, 
with the express clause of a penalty attached to the infraction, 
or of a recompense attached to the observance of the order." 

Do such orders exist in Nature ? Yes. 

What does the word Nature signify ? It bears three differ- 
ent senses : 

i st. It signifies the universe, the material world ; in this 
sense we say, "the beauty (or richness) of nature," that is, the 
objects of heaven or earth exposed to our sight. 

2d. It signifies the power that animates, that moves the 
universe, considering it as a distinct being, as the soul is to the 
body; in this sense we say, "The intentions of nature." 

3d. It signifies the partial operation of this power on each 
being, or each class of beings ; as we say, "The nature of 
man is an enigma." 

What are the characters of the laws of nature ? 

There can be assigned ten principal ones. 

What is the first? 

To be inherent to the existence of things, and consequent- 
ly anterior to every other law; so that all others are only 
imitations. 

What is the second ? 

To be derived immediately from God, and presented by 
him to each man, whereas all other laws are presented to us by 
men. 

What is the third ? 



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To be common to all times and countries ; that is to say, 
to be one and universal. 

Is no other law universal ? 

No; for no other is applicable to all people, — they originate 
from persons and places. 

What is the fourth character ? 

To be uniform and invariable. 

Is no other law uniform and invariable ? 

No ; for what one and the same law approves at one time 
or place it condemns in another. 

What is the fifth character ? 

To be evident and palpable, constantly present to the 
senses, and to demonstration. 
What is its sixth character ? 

To be conformed always to reason as no other laws are. 
What is its seventh ? 

To be wholly just, because the penalties are, proportionate 
to the infractions. 

What is its eighth ? 

To be pacific and tolerant, because in the law of nature all 
men being brothers, and equal in rights, it recommends only 
peace, and toleration, even for errors, to them. 

What is its ninth? 

To be equally beneficent to all, in teaching them the true 
means of becoming better and happier. 
What is its tenth ? 

That it is alone sufficient to make men happier and better, 
because it comprises all that is good and useful in other laws, 
either civil or religious, essentially the moral part of them ; so 
that if other laws were divested of it, they would become 
chimerical and imaginary opinions, devoid of practical utility. 1 
—C. F. Volney. 

Jesus of Nazereth. 

He worked at the trade of his father, which was that of a 
carpenter. Inis was no humiliating or unwelcome circum- 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



153 



stance. The Jewish customs demanded that the man devoted 
to intellectual labors should understand some occupation. The 
most celebrated doctors had trades; thus St. Paul, whose 
education had been so well cared for, was a tent-maker. Jesus 
was never married. All his power to love was transferred to 
what he considered his celestial vocation. The extremely deli- 
cate feeling which we notice in him toward women never 
departed from the exclusive devotion which he had to his idea. 
He treated as sisters, like Francis d'Assisi and Francis de Sales, 
those women who were enamored with the same work as he ; 
and he had his St. Claires, his Francoise de Chantal. * * * 

What was the progress of the mind of Jesus during this 
obscure period of his life ? Through what meditations did he 
launch out into the prophetic career? We are ignorant, his 
history having come to us in isolated stories, and without exact 
chronology. But the development of living products is every- 
where the same, and there can be no doubt that the growth of 
a personality so mighty as that of Jesus obeyed rigid laws. A 
lofty idea of Divinity, which he did not owe to Judaism, and 
which seems to have been entirely the creation of his great 
soul, was the foundation of all his power. 

Here it is that we must, most of all, renounce those ideas 
with which we are familiar, and those discussions in which 
small minds wear themselves away. Properly to understand 
the degree of the piety of Jesus, we must rid ourselves of all 
that has intruded between the gospel and ourselves. Deism 
and paganism have become the two poles of theology. The 
paltry discussion of scholasticisms, the aridity of soul of Des- 
cartes, the thorough irreligion of the eighteenth century, by 
diminishing God, and in some sort limiting him by the exclu- 
sion of all that is not him, stifled in the breast of modern 
rationalism every fruitful feeling of divinity. If God is indeed 
a determinate being without us, the person who believes that 
he has private relations with God is a "visionary," and as the 
physical and physiological sciences have shown us that every 
supernatural vision is an illusion, the deist who is at all con- 
10 



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sistent, finds himself beyond the possibility of comprehending 
the great beliefs of the past. Pantheism, on the other hand, 
by denying the divine personality, is as far as possible from 
the living God of the ancient religions. 

Were the men who have most loftily comprehended God, 
Sakya-Mouni, Plato, St. Paul, St. Francis d'Assisi, and St. 
Augustine, at some moments of their changeful lives, deists or 
pantheists ? Such a question has no meaning. To them the 
physical and metaphysical proofs of the existence of God 
would have had no interest. They felt the divine within them- 
selves. In the first rank of this grand family of the true sons 
of God we must place Jesus. He had no visions ; God does 
not speak to him from without; God is in him; he feels that 
he is with God, and he draws from his own heart what he says 
of his Father. He lives in the bosom of God by uninterrupted 
communication ; he does no 4 " see him, but he understands him, 
without need of thunder and the burning bush like Moses, of 
a revealing tempest like Job, of an oracle like the old Greek 
sages, of a familiar genius like Socrates, or of an angel Gabriel 
like Mahomet. He never, for a moment, enounces the sacri- 
ligious idea that he is God. He believes that he is in direct 
communication with God ; he believes himself the Son of God. 
The highest consciousness of God which ever existed in the 
breast of humanity was that of Jesus. * * * 

God, conceived immediately as Father, this is the whole 
theology of Jesus. And that was not with him a theoretical 
principle, a doctrine more or less proven, and which he sought 
to inculcate. He used no argument with his disciples; he 
exacted from them no effort at attention. He did not preach 
opinions, he preached himself. Often the greatest and most 
disinterested souls present, associated with a high degree of 
elevation this peculiarity of perpetual attention to themselves 
and extreme personal susceptibility. Their persuasion that 
God is within them, and perpetually caring for them, is so 
strong that they have no fear of imposing themselves on others ; 
with our reserve, our respect for the opinions of others which is 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



*55 



a portion of our weakness, they have nothing to do. This 
exalted personality is not egotism ; for such men, possessed by 
their idea, gladly give their life to seal their work ; it is the 
identification of the me with the object it has embraced, carried 
to its last extent. It is pride to those who see in it only the 
personal fantasy of the founder; it is the ringer of God to 
those who see the result. The fool here almost touches the 
inspired man ; only the fool never succeeds. 

Hitherto it has never been given to aberration of mind to 
produce a serious effect upon the progress of humanity. 

Jesus undoubtedly did not, at once, reach this lofty affirma- 
tion of himself ; but it is probable that from the very first he 
looked to God in the relation of a son to a father. This is his 
great act of originality ; in this he is in no wise with his race. 
Neither the Jew nor the Moslem have learned this delightful 
theology of love. The God of Jesus is not the hateful master 
who kills us when he pleases, damns us when he pleases, saves 
us when he pleases. He is our Father. We hear him when 
we listen to a low voice within us which says, " Father." 

The God of Jesus is not the partial despot who has chosen 
Israel for his people, and protects it in the face of all and 
against all. He is the God of humanity. Jesus will not be a 
patriot like the Maccabees, or a theocrat like Juda the 
Gaulonite. Rising boldly above the prejudices of his nation, 
he will establish the universal fatherhood of God. * * * 

Jesus was not sinless; he conquered the same passions 
which we combat ; no angel of God comforted him, save his 
good conscience ; no Satan tempted him, save that which each 
bears in his heart. As many of the grand aspects of his 
character are lost to us by the fault of his disciples, it is prob- 
able also that many of his faults have been dissembled. But 
never has any man made the interests of humanity predom- 
inate in his life over the littleness of self-love so much as he. 
Devoted without reserve .to his idea, he subordinated every- 
thing to it to such a degree, that towards the end of his life. 



156 CHAPTERS FROM THE 

the universe no longer existed for him. It was by this flood 
of heroic will that he conquered heaven. — Er?iest Renan. 

The Spiritual Man Real. 

That a man is equally a man after death, although he is not 
apparent to the eyes, may appear * * * especially from 
the Lord himself, who showed his disciples that he was a man, 
by touch, and by eating, and yet became invisible to their eyes. 
The reason why they saw him was because the eyes of their 
spirits were then opened; and when these eyes are opened the 
things in the spiritual world appear as clearly as the things in 
the natural world. 

Since it has pleased the Lord to open the eyes of my spirit, 
and to keep them open now for nineteen years, it has been 
given me to see the things which are in the spiritual world, as 
well as to describe them. I can asseverate that they are not 
visions, but things seen in all wakefulness. 

The difference between a man in the natural world and a 
man in the spiritual world is, that the one is clothed in a natu 
ral body, but the other in a spiritual body. * * * What 
kind of difference this is (between the natural, or material, and 
spiritual) may be described, but not in a few words. — Swc- 
denborg. 

The Soul Indestructible. 

At the age of seventy-five one must, of course, think fre- 
quently of death. But this thought never gives me the least 
uneasiness, I am so fully convinced that the soul is indestruc- 
tible, and that its activity will continue through eternity. It is 
like the sun which seems to our eyes to set in the night, but is 
really gone to diffuse its light elsewhere. Even while sinking 
it remains the same sun. — Goethe. 

Of Merit. 

They who do good with a view of merit are not influenced 
by the love of God, but by the love of reward ; for they who 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



157 



are desirous of merit are also desirous of reward ; and have 
respect to the reward, in which, and not in the good, they 
place their delight. Such, therefore, are not spiritual men, but 
natural. To do good which is really such, man must act from 
the love of good, and thus for the sake of good. * * * 

They who do good for the sake of reward, do not act from 
the Lord, but from themselves ; they regard themselves in the 
first place, inasmuch as they regard their own good. * * 

* * Genuine charity and faith entirely disclaim all merit ; 
for the delight of charity is good itself, and the delight of faith 
is truth itself. The Lord Himself plainly teaches that man is 
not to do good for the sake of reward, where he says : "For 
if ye love them that love you, what thank have ye? for sinners 
also love those that love them. But love your enemies, and 
do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again, and your reward 
shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest. " 

* * The delight which is inher nt in the love of doing 
good without any view to reward, is itself an eternal reward ; 
for heaven and eternal happiness are inseminated into that 
good by the Lord. — Swedenhorg* 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



CHAPTER XII. 

GREAT BRITAIN. 

QUESTIONS. 

Ancient Wales. 

Knowest thou what thou art, 

In the hour of sleep — ■ 

A mere body— a mere soul — 

Or a secret retreat of light ? 

Knowest thou where the night awaits 

For the passing of the day ? 

Knowest thou the token 

Of every leaf which grows ? 

What is it which heaves up the mountain 

Before the convulsion of the elements ? 

Or what supports the fabric 

Of the habitable earth ? 

Who is the illuminator of the soul — 

Who has seen — who knows him — 

What are the properties of the soul, 

Of what form are its members? 

In what part, and when, it takes up its abode ; 

By what wind or stream is it supplied ? 

From Mabgyvrean, or Elements of Instruction, by Taliesin, A. D. 600. 



FRANCIS BACON (a. d. 1560). 
Of Adversity. 

It was a high speech of Seneca (after the manner of the 
Stoics) that the " good things which belong to prosperity are 
to be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity are 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



159 



to be admired/"' (Bona rerum secundarum optabilia, adver- 
sarum mirabilia). Certainly, if miracles be the command over 
nature, they appear most in adversity. It is a yet higher 
speech ot his than the other (much too high for a heathen), 
" It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man, and 
the security of a God." This would have done better in 
poesy, where transcendencies are more allowed; and the poets, 
indeed, have been busy with it — for it is in effect the thing 
which is figured in that strange fiction of the ancient poets, 
which seemeth not to be without mystery; nay, and to have 
some approach to the state of a Christian, "That Hercules, 
when he went to unbind Prometheus (by whom human nature 
is represented), sailed the length of the great ocean in an 
earthen pot or pitcher ; lively describing Christian resolution, 
that saileth in the frail bark of the flesh through the waves of 
the world." But to speak in a mean, the virtue of prosperity 
is temperance, the virtue of adversity is fortitude, which in 
morals is the more heroical virtue. Prosperity is the blessing 
of the Old Testament, adversity is the blessing of the New, 
which carrieth the greater benediction, and the clearer revela- 
tion of God's favor. Yet even in the Old Testament, if you 
listen to David's harp, you shall hear as many hearse-like airs 
as carols ; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more 
in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solcv 
mon. Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes ; and 
adversity is not without comfort and hopes. We see in needle- 
works and embroideries it is more pleasing to have a lively 
work upon a sad and solemn ground, than to have a dark and 
melancholy work upon a lightsome ground : judge, therefore, 
of the pleasure of the heart by the pleasure of the eye. Cer- 
tainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragant where they are 
incensed, or crushed ; for prosperity doth best discover vice, 
but adversity doth best discover virtue. 



i6o 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



Of Superstition. 

It were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such 
an opinion as is unworthy of him ; for the one is unbelief, the 
other is contumely ; and certainly superstition is the reproach 
of the Deity. Plutarch saith well to that purpose : " Surely," 
saith he, " I had rather a great deal men should say there was 
no such a man at all as Plutarch, than that they should say 
there was one Plutarch that would eat his children as soon as 
they were born/' as the poets speak of Saturn ; and as the 
contumely is greater towards God, so the danger is greater 
towards men. Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, 
to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides 
to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but 
superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute mon- 
archy in the minds of men : therefore atheism did never per- 
turb states ; for it makes men wary of themselves, as looking 
no further ; and we see the times inclined to atheism, as the 
time of Augustus Caesar, were civil times ; but superstition 
hath been the confusion of many states, and bringeth in a new 
" primum mobile " (first motive cause), that ravisheth all the 
spheres of government. The master of superstition is the 
people, and in all superstition wise men follow fools; and 
arguments are fitted to practice in a reversed order. It was 
gravely said by some of the prelates in the Council of Trent, 
where the doctrine of the schoolmen bare great sway, that the 
schoolmen were like astronomers, which did feign eccentrics 
and epicycles, and such engines of orbs, to save the phe- 
nomena, though they knew there were no such things ; and, in 
like manner, that the schoolmen had framed a number of sub- 
tile and intricate axioms and theorems, to save the practice of 
the church. The causes of superstition are pleasing and sen- 
sual rites and ceremonies; excess of outward and physical 
holiness ; over-great reverence of traditions, which cannot but 
load the church ; the strategems of prelates for their own 
ambition and lucre ; the favoring too much of good intentions, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



161 



which openeth the gate to conceits and novelties ; the taking 
an aim at divine matters by human, which cannot but breed 
mixture of imaginations ; and, lastly, barbarous times, espe- 
cially joined with calamities and disasters. Superstition, with- 
out a veil, is a deformed thing ; for as it addeth deformity to 
an ape to be so like a man, so the similitude of superstition to 
religion makes it the more deformed ; and as wholesome meat 
corrupteth to little worms, so good forms and orders corrupt 
into a number of petty observances. There is a superstition 
in avoiding superstition, when men think to do best if they go 
furthest from the superstition formerly received ; therefore care 
should be had that (as it fareth in ill purgings) the good be 
not taken away with the bad, which commonly is done when 
the people is the reformer. 

Plea for a Free Press and Free Thought. 

* * * * Good and evil we know in the field 
of this world grow up together almost inseparably ; and the 
knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the 
knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances 
hardly to be discovered, that those confused seeds which were 
imposed upon Psyche as an incessant labor to cull out and 
sort asunder, were not more intermixed. It was from out 
the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and 
evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the 
world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into, 
of having good and evil, that is to say, of knowing good by 
evil. As, therefore, the state of man now is, what knowledge 
can there be to choose, what continence to forbear, without 
the knowledge of evil ? He that can apprehend and consider 
vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain 
and distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is 
the true wayfaring Christian. 

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised 
and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, 



162 



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but slinks out of the race, where the immortal garland is to be 
run for, not without dust and heat. * 

That virtue, therefore, which is but a youngling in the con- 
templation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice prom- 
ises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a 
pure ; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness ; which 
was the reason why our sage and serious poet, Spencer, 
describing true temperance under the person of Guion, brings 
him in, with his palmer, through the cave of Mammon, and 
the bower of earthly bliss, that he might see and know, and 
yet abstain. 

Since, therefore, the knowledge and survey of vice is in 
this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue 
and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how 
can we more safely and with less danger scout into the regions 
of sin and falsity, than by reading all manner of tractates, and 
hearing all manner of reason ? 

»fc *p 

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely 
according to conscience, above all liberties. * * 

And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play 
upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously by 
licensing and prohibiting to mis-doubt her strength. Let her 
and falsehood grapple ; who ever knew truth put to the worse, 
in a free and open encounter? He who hears what praying 
there is for light and clear knowledge to be sent down among 
us, would think of other matters to be constituted beyond the 
discipline of Geneva, framed and fabriced already to our 
hands. Yet when the new light which we beg for shines in 
upon us, there be those who envy and oppose, if it come not 
in first at their casement. * * * 

For who knows not that truth is strong next to the 
Almighty ; she needs no policies or stratagems to make he- 
victorious ; those are but the shifts that error uses against her 
power. What great purchase is this Christian liberty which 
Paul so often boasts of? His doctrine- is, that he who eats or 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



163 



eats not, regards a day or regards it not, may do either to the 
Lord. How many other things might be tolerated in peace, 
and left to conscience, had we but charity, and were it not the 
chief stronghold of our hypocrisy to be ever judging one 
another ? I fear yet this iron yoke of outward conformity hath 
left a slavish print upon our necks. * * 

And what do they tell us vainly of new opinions, when this 
very opinion of theirs, that none must be heard but whom they 
like, is the worst and newest opinion of all others ; and is the 
chief cause why sects and schisms so much abound, and true 
knowledge is kept at distance from us ; besides yet a greater 
danger which is in it. For when God shakes a kingdom, with 
strong and healthful commotions, to a general reforming, it is 
not untrue that many sectaries and false teachers are then 
busiest in seducing; but yet more true is it, that God raises to 
his own work men of rare abilities, -and more than common 
industry, not only to look back and revise what hath hereto- 
fore been taught, but to gain further, and to go on some new 
enlightened steps in the discovery of truth. — John Milton 
A. D. 1641 . 



Thoughts from the Arcadia. 

Longer I would not wish to draw breath than I may keep 
myself unspotted of any heinous crime. 

In the clear mind of virtue treason can find no hiding-place. 

The hero's soul may be separated from his body, but never 
alienated from the remembrance of virtue. 

Doing good is the only certainly happy action of a man's 

life. 

The journey of high honor lies not in smooth ways. 

Remember that in all miseries lamenting becomes fools, 
and action the wise. 

In a brave bosom honor cannot be rocked asleep by 
affection. 

Prefer truth before the maintaining of an opinion. 



164 



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Joyful is woe for a noble cause, and welcome all its 
miseries. 

A just man hateth the evil, but not the evil-doer. 

It is folly to believe that he can faithfully love, who does 
not love faithfulness. 

Everything that is mine, even to my life, is hers I love, but 
the secret of my friend is not mine. 

A man of true honor thinks himself greater in being sub- 
ject to his own word, than in being lord of a principality. 

They are never alone that are accompanied with noble 
thoughts. — Sir Philip Sidney. 



No Cross, no Crown. 

The cross of Christ is a figurative speech borrowed from 
the outward tree or wooden cross on which Christ submitted to 
the will of God, in permitting him to suffer death at the hands 
of evil men. The cross mystical is that divine grace and power 
which crosses the carnal wills of men, gives a contradiction to 
their corrupt affections, and constantly opposeth itself to the 
inordinate and fleshly appetites of their minds ; and so may be 
justly termed the instrument of man's holy dying to the world, 
and being made conformable to the will of God. * * 

Nor is a recluse life, the boasted righteousness of some, 
much more commendable, or one whit nearer the nature of the 
true cross ; for if it be not unlawful as other things are, it is 
unnatural, which true religion teaches not. The Christian con- 
vent and monastery are within, where the soul is encloistered 
from sin. And this religious house the true followers of Christ 
carry about with them, who exempt not themselves from the 
conversation of the world, though they keep themselves from 
the evil of the world in their conversation. 

That is a lazy, rusty, unprofitable self-denial, burdensome 
to others to feed their idleness ; religious bedlams, where peo- 
ple are kept up, lest they should do mischief abroad ; patience 



BIRLE OF THE AGES. 



$er force ; self-denial against their will, rather ignorant than vir- 
tuous ; and out of the way of temptation, than constant in it. 

No thanks if they commit not what they are not tempted 
to commit. What the eye views not, the heart craves not, as 
well as rues not. The cross of Christ is of another nature. 
It truly overcomes the world, and leads a life of purity in the 
face of its allurements. They that bear it are not thus chained 
up, for fear they should bite ; nor locked up lest they should 
be stolen away. They receive power from Christ, their Cap- 
tain, to resist the evil, and do that which is good in the sight 
of God ; to despise the world, and love its reproach above its 
praise, and not to offend others, but even to love those who 
offend them, though not for offending them. 

What a world we should have, if everybody, for fear of 
transgressing, should mew himself up within four walls ! No 
such matter; the perfection of the Christian life extends to 
every honest labor or traffic used among men. 

True godliness does not turn men out of the world, but 
enables them to live better in it ; and excites their endeavors 
to mend it : " not to hide their candle under a bushel, but to 
set it upon a table, in a candlestick." Besides, it is a selfish 
invention ; and that can never be the way of taking up the 
cross, which the true cross is taken up to subject. Again, this 
humor runs away by itself, and leaves the world behind to be 
lost Christians should keep the helm, and guide the vessel to 
its port ; not meanly steal out at the stern of the world, and 
leave those that are in it without a pilot, to be driven by the 
fury of evil times upon the rock or sand of ruin. This sort of 
life, if taken up by young people, is commonly to cover idle- 
ness, or to pay portions ; to save the lazy from the pain of 
punishment, or quality from the disgrace of poverty ; one will 
not work, and the other scorns it. If taken up by the aged, a 
long life of guilt sometimes flies to superstition for refuge; 
and, after having had its own will in other things, would finish 
it with a wilful religion to make God amends. 

Taking up the cross of Jesus is a more interior exercise. 



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It is the circumspection and discipline of the soul, in conform- 
ity to the divine mind therein revealed. Does not the body 
follow the soul, and not the soul the body? Consider, that no 
outward cell can shut up the soul from lust, or the mind from 
an infinity of unrighteous imaginations ! The thoughts of 
man's heart are evil, and that continually. Evil comes from 
within, and not from without. How then can an external 
application remove an internal cause ; or a restraint upon the 
body work a confinement of the mind ? Less even than with- 
out doors; for where there is least of action, there is most 
time to think; and if those thoughts are not guided by a 
higher principle, convents are more mischievous to the world 
than exchanges. And yet retirement is both an excellent and 
needful thing : crowds and throngs were not much frequented 
by the ancient holy pilgrims 

Examine, O man, thy foundation, what it is, and who placed 
thee there ; lest in the end it should appear thou hast put an 
eternal cheat upon thy own soul. The inward steady right- 
eousness of Jesus is another thing, than all the contrived 
devotion of poor superstitious m:n ; and to stand approved in 
the sight of God, excels that bodily exercise in religion result- 
ing from the invention of men. The soul that is awakened 
and preserved by his holy power and spirit, lives to him in the 
way of his own institution, and worships him in his own spirit, 
that is, in the holy sense, life, and leadings of it; which indeed 
is the evangelical worship. Not that I would be thought to 
slight a true retirement ; for I do not only acknowledge, but 
admire solitude. Christ himself was an example of it : he loved, 
and chose to frequent, mountains, gardens, sea-sides. It is 
requisite to the growth of piety, and I reverence the virtue 
that seeks and uses it, wishing there were more of it in the 
world : but then it should be free, not constrained. — William 
Perm. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



167 



The Testimonies of several Great, Learned, and Vir- 
tuous Personages among the Gentiles and Christians, 
urged in favor of self-denial, temperance, and plety. 

Philip, king of Macedon, upon three sorts of good news 
arriving in one day, feared too much success might transport 
him immoderately ; and therefore prayed for some disappoint- 
ments, to season his prosperity, and caution his mind under 
the enjoyment of it. He refused to oppress the Greeks with 
his garrisons, saying, " I had rather retain them by kindness, 
than fear ; and be always beloved, than to be for awhile terri- 
ble." One of his minions persuading him to decline hearing a 
cause, wherein a particular friend was interested; "I had much 
rather," says he, " thy friend should lose his cause, than I my 
reputation." Seeing his son Alexander endeavor to gain the 
hearts of the Macedonians by gifts and rewards, "Canst thou 
believe," says he, "that a man whom thou hast corrupted to 
thy interests will ever be true to them?" When his court would 
have had him quarrel with and correct the Peloponnesians for 
their ingratitude to him, he said, "By no means; for if they 
despise and abuse me, after being kind to them, what will they 
do if I do them harm?" 

Phocion, a famous Athenian, was honest and poor, yea, he 
contemned riches ; for a certain governor making rich presents, 
he returned them, saying, "I refused Alexander's." And when 
several persuaded him to accept of such bounty, or else his 
children would want, he answered, " If my son be virtuous, I 
shall leave him enough ; and if he be vicious, more would be 
too little." He rebuked the excess of the Athenians, and that 
openly, saying, " He that eateth more than he ought, maketh 
more diseases than he can cure." To condemn or flatter him, 
was to him alike. Demosthenes telling him, " "Whenever the 
people were enraged, they would kill him;" he answered, "And 
thee also, when they are come to their wits." After all the 
great services of his life, he was unjustly condemned to die, 
and going to the place of his execution, lamented of the people, 



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one of his enemies spat in his face ; he took it without any 
disorder of mind, only saying, " Take him away." 

Hipparchia, a fair Macedonian virgin, noble of blood, as 
they term it, but more truly noble of mind, I cannot omit to 
mention ; who entertained so earnest an affection for Crates, 
the cynical philosopher, as well for his severe life as excellent 
discourse, that by no means could her relations or suitors, by 
all their wealth, nobility, and beauty, dissuade her from being 
his companion. Upon this strange resolution, they all betook 
themselves to Crates, beseeching him to show himself a true 
philosopher, by persuading her to desist ; which he strongly 
endeavored by many arguments ; but not prevailing, went his 
way, and brought all the little furniture of his house and 
showed her. This, saith he, is thy husband; that, the furniture 
of thy house : consider on it, for thou canst not be mine, unless 
thou followest the same course of life ; for being rich above 
twenty talents, which is more than fifty thousand pounds, he 
neglected all, to follow a retired life. All this had so contrary 
an effect, that she immediately went to him, before them all, 
and said, " I seek not the pomp and effeminacy of this world, 
but knowledge and virtue, Crates ; and choose a life of tem- 
perance, before a life of delicacies : for true satisfaction, thou 
knowest, is in the mind; and that pleasure is only worth seek- 
ing, which lasts forever." Thus she became the constant com- 
panion both of his love and life, his friendship and virtues : 
traveling with hin from place to place, and performing the 
public exercises of instruction with Crates, wherever they came. 
She was a most violent enemy to all impiety, but especially to 
wanton men and women, and those whose garb and conversa- 
tion showed them devoted to vain pleasures and pastimes : 
effeminacy rendering the like persons not only unprofitable, 
but pernicious to the whole world. Which she as well made 
good by the example of her exceeding industry, temperance, 
and severity, as those are wont to do by their intemperance 
and folly : for ruin of health, estates, virtue, and loss of eternal 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



169 



happiness, have ever attended, and ever will attend, such 
earthly minds. 

Justin Martyr, a philosopher, who received Christianity 
five and twenty years after the death of Ignatius, plainly tells 
us, in his relation of his conversion to the Christian faith, 
that "The power of godliness in a plain, simple Christian, had 
such influence and operation on his soul that he could not 
but betake himself to a serious and strict life : " And yet, 
before, he was a Cynic ; a strict sect. And this gave him joy 
at his martyrdom, having spent his days as a serious teacher, 
and a good example. And Eusebius relates, " That though 
he was also a follower of Plato's doctrine, yet, when he saw 
the Christians' piety and courage, he concluded no people so 
temperate, less voluptuous, and more set on divine things." 
Which first induced him to be a Christian. 

Michael de Montaigne, a lord of France, famous with 
men of letters for his book of Essays, gives these instructions 
to others, and this character of himself, viz. : " Amidst our 
banquets, feasts, and pleasures, let us ever have the restraint or 
object of death before us, that is, the remembrance of our con- 
dition. And let no pleasure so much mislead or transport us, 
as to neglect or forget how many ways our joys or our feastings 
be subject unto death, and by how many holdfasts she threat- 
eneth us and you. So did the Egyptians, who in the midst of 
their banquetings, and in their greatest cheer, caused the 
anatomy of a dead man to be brought before them, as a mem- 
orandum and warning to their guests. I am now, by means of 
the mercy of God, in such a taking, that without regret, or 
grieving at any worldly matter, I am prepared to dislodge, 
whensoever he shall please to call me. I am everywhere free. 
My farewell is soon taken of all my friends, except of myself 
No man ever prepared himself to quit the world more simply 
and fully, or did more generally lay aside all thoughts of it, 
than I am assured I shall do. All the glory that I pretend to 
in my life, is, that I have lived quietly. Let us not propose so 
fleeting and so wavering an end to ourselves, as this world's, 
11 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



glory. Let us constantly follow truth : and let the vulgar 
approbation follow us that way, if it please. I care not so 
much what I am with others, as I respect what I am in myself. 
I will be rich in myself, and not by borrowing. Strangers see 
but external appearances and events : Every man can set a 
good face upon the matter, when within he is full of care, grief 
and infirmities. They see not my heart, when they look upon 
my outward countenance. We are nought but ceremony; cer- 
emony doth transport us, and we leave the substance of things. 
We hold fast by the boughs, and leave the trunk or body, the 
substance of things, behind us." 

Sir Walter Raleigh is an eminent instance, being as 
extraordinary a man as our nation hath produced. In his 
person, well descended ; of health, strength, and masculine 
beauty ; in understanding, quick ; in judgment, sound, learned 
and wise, valiant and skillful; a historian, a philosopher, a 
general, a statesman, After a long life, full of experience, he 
drops these excellent sayings a little before his death, to his 
son, to his wife, and to the world, viz. : " Exceed not in the 
humor of rags and bravery ; for these will soon wear out of 
fashion ; and no man is esteemed for gay garments, but by 
fools and women. On the other side, seek not riches basely, 
nor attain them by evil means. Destroy no man for his wealth, 
nor take anything from the poor; for the cry thereof will 
pierce the heavens. And it is most detestable before God, and 
most dishonorable before worthy men, to wrest anything from 
the needy and laboring soul : God will never prosper thee if 
thou offendest therein ; but use thy poor neighbors and tenants 
well." A most worthy saying. But he adds, " Have compas- 
sion on the poor and afflicted, and God will bless thee for it. 
Make not the hungry sorrowful ; for if he curse thee in the 
bitterness of his soul, his prayer shall be heard of him that 
made him. Now, for the world, dear child, I know it too well 
to persuade thee to dive into the practices of it. Rather stand 
upon thy guard against all those that tempt thee to it, or may 
practice upon thee ; whether in thy conscience, thy reputation, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



171 



or thy estate. Resolve that no man is wise or safe, but he 
that is honest. Serve God ; let him be the author of all thy 
actions. Commend all thy endeavors to him, who must either 
wither or prosper them. Please him with prayer ; lest if he 
frown, he confound all thy fortune and labor, like the drops of 
rain upon the sandy ground. Let my experienced advice and 
fatherly instruction sink deep into thy heart : So God direct 
thee in all thy ways and fill thy heart with his grace." 

His noble and touching letter to his wife, after his condemna- 
tion, says : "You shall receive, my dear wife, my last words, in 
these my last lines. My love I send to you, that you may 
keep it when I am dead; and my counsel, that you may 
remember it when I am no more. I would not with my will 
present you sorrows, dear Bess; let them go to the grave 
with me, and be buried in the dust ; and seeing it is not the 
will of God that I shall see you any more, bear my destruction 
patiently, and with a heart like yourself. First, I send you all 
the thanks which my heart can conceive, or my words express, 
for your many travails and cares for me ; which, though they 
have not taken effect as you wished, yet my debt to you is not 
the less ; but pay it I never shall in this world. Secondly, I 
beseech you for the love you bear me living, that you do not 
hide yourself many days; but by your travails seek to help my 
miserable fortunes, and the right of your poor child; your 
mourning cannot avail me, who am but dust Thirdly, you 
shall understand that my lands were conveyed {bona fide) to my 
child ; the writings were drawn at midsummer was a twelve- 
month, as divers can witness ; and I trust my blood will 
quench their malice, who desired my slaughter, that they will 
not seek to kill you and yours with extreme poverty. 

"To what friend to direct you, I know not; for all mine 
have left me in the true time of trial. Most sorry am I, that 
being surprised by death, I can leave thee no better estate. 
God hath prevented all my determinations ; that Great God 
which worketh all in all. If you can live free from want, care 
for no more ; for the rest is but vanity. Love God and begin, 



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betimes; in him shall you find true, everlasting and endless 
comfort. When you have wearied yourself with all sorts 
of worldly cogitations, you shall sit down by sorrow in the end. 
Teach your son also to serve and fear God, whilst he is young, 
that the fear of God may grow up in him ; then God will be a 
husband to you, and a father to him ; a husband and a father 
that can never be taken from you. 

" Dear wife, I beseech you, for my soul's sake, pay all poor 
men. When I am dead, no doubt you will be much sought 
unto, for the world thinks I was very rich ; have a care of the 
fair pretences of men ; for no greater misery can befall you in 
this life, than to become a prey to the world, and after to be 
despised. As for me, I am no more yours, nor you mine. 
Death hath cut us asunder ; and God hath divided me from 
the world, and you from me. Remember your poor child for 
his father's sake, who loved you in his happiest estate. I sued 
for my life, but God knows it was for you and yours that I desired 
it. For know it, my dear wife, your child is the child of a 
true man, who in his own respect despiseth death, and his mis- 
shapen and ugly forms. I cannot write much ; God knows 
how hardly I steal this time, when all are asleep : And it is 
also time to separate my thoughts from the world. Beg my 
dead body, which living was denied you ; and either lay it in 
Sherburne, or in Exeter Church, by my father and mother. I 
can say no more ; time and death call me away. The ever- 
lasting God Almighty, who is goodness itself, the true light and 
life, keep you and yours, and have mercy upon me, and forgive 
my persecutors and false accusers ; and send us to meet in His 
glorious kingdom. My dear wife, farewell ; bless my boy ; 
pray for me ; and let my true God hold you both in His arms. 
" Yours that was, but not now my own, 

"Walter Raleigh." 

Behold wisdom, resolution, nature and grace ! how strong 
in argument, wise in council, firm, affectionate and devout. 
O that your heroes and politicians would make their example 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



173 



in his death, as well as magnify the great actions of his life. 
I doubt not, had he been to live over his days again, with his 
experience, he had made less noise, and yet done more good 
to the world and himself. — William Penn. 



Extract from a Noble Address to King Charles II., 
on his Restoration. 

To Charles II., King, &c. : 

Robert Barclay, a servant of Jesus Christ, called of God 
to the dispensation of the Gospel, wishes health and salvation. 
As it is inconsistent with the truth I bear, so it is far from me 
to use this epistle as an engine to flatter thee. * * * To 
God alone I owe what I have, and that more immediately in 
matters spiritual ; and therefore to Him alone, and to the ser- 
vice of His truth, I dedicate whatever work He brings forth in 
me. 

Thou hast tasted of prosperity and adversity ; thou 
knowest what it is to be banished thy native country, to be 
overruled as well as to rule and sit upon the throne; and being 
oppressed, thou hast reason to know how hateful the oppression 
is both to God and man. 

God hath done great things for thee; He hath sufficiently 
shown thee that it is by Him princes rule, and that He can 
pull down and set up at His pleasure. He hath often faith- 
fully warned thee by His servants, since He restored thee to 
the royal dignity, that thy heart might not wax wanton against 
Him to forget His mercies and providence towards thee; 
whereby He might permit thee to be soothed up and lulled 
asleep in thy sins by the flattering of court parasites, who by 
their fawning are the ruin of many princes. 

God Almighty, who hath so signally hitherto visited thee 
with His love, so touch and reach thy heart, ere the day of thy 
visitation be expired, that thou mayest effectually turn to Him 



174 CHAPTERS FROM THE 

so as to improve thy place and station for His name. So 
wisheth, so prayeth, 

Thy faithful friend and subject, 

Robert Barclay, a Friend, or Quaker. 

Divine Sagacity, or Intuition. 

I shall commend to them that would successfully philoso- 
phize the belief and endeavor after a certain principle more 
noble and inward than reason itself, and without which, reason 
will falter, or at least reach but to mean and frivolous ends. I 
have a sense of something in me while I thus speak, which, I 
must confess, is of so recluse a nature that I have no name for 
it, unless I should adventure to call it divine sagacity, which is 
the first rise of a successful reason. — Dr. Henry More. 

Courage. 

Certainly the purging of our natural spirits and raising our 
soul to her due height of piety, and weaning her from the love 
of the body, and too tender a sympathy with the frail flesh, 
begets that courage and majesty of mind in a man, that both 
inward and outward fiends shall tremble at his presence, and 
fly before him as darkness at light's approach. For the soul 
hath then ascended her fiery vehicle, and it is noon to her 
midnight, be she awake herself. — Dr. H. More. 

Spiritual Intercourse. 

I believe there is a supernatural and a spiritual world, in 
which human spirits both good and bad live in a state of con- 
sciousness. 

I believe that any of these spirits may, according to the 
order of God, in the laws of their place of residence, have 
intercourse with this world, and become visible unto mortals. 

I believe Samuel did actually appear unto Saul, and that 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



175 



he was sent by the especial mercy of God, to warn the infat- 
uated King of his approaching death. — Adam Clarke. 

Future Growth of the Soul. 

Among excellent arguments for the immortality of the soul 
there is one, drawn from its perpetual progress to its perfection, 
without a possibility of ever arriving at it ; which is a hint that 
I do not remember to have seen opened and improved on by 
others, though it seems to me to carry great weight. How can 
it enter into the thoughts of man, that the soul, which is capable 
of such immense perfections and of receiving new improve- 
ments to all eternity, shall fall away into nothing almost as soon 
as it is created ? * * * 

Would an infinitely wise Being make such glorious beings 
for so mean and brief a purpose ? Would he give us talents 
not to be exerted, capacities never to be gratified ? How can 
we find that wisdom that shines in all his works, in the forma- 
tion of man, without looking on this world as only a nursery 
for the next, and believing that the several generations which 
rise and disappear in quick succession are only to receive their 
first rudiments of existence here, and to be transplanted into 
a more friendly climate, where they may spread and flourish to 
all eternity? There is not a more pleasing consideration in 
religion than this of the perpetual progress which the soul 
makes toward the perfection of its nature, without ever arriving 
at a period in it. To look upon the soul as going on from 
strength to strength, to consider that she is to shine forever 
with new accessions of glory, that she will still be adding virtue 
to virtue, and knowledge to knowledge, carries in it something 
wonderfully agreeable to that ambition which is natural to the 
mind of man. 

Methinks this one consideration of the progress of a finite 
spirit to perfection, will be sufficient to extinguish all envy in 
inferior natures, and all contempt in superior. The cherub 
that now appears as a god to a human soul, knows that a time 



176 



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will come when that soul shall be as perfect as he now is ; nay, 
when she shall look down on that degree of perfection. It is 
true the higher nature still advances, and preserves his supe- 
riority, but he knows that how high soever the station may be 
of which he stands prepossessed, the inferior nature will mount 
up to it, and shine in the same degree of glory. 

With what astonishment and veneration may we look into 
our own souls, where there are such hidden stores of virtue 
and knowledge ! Such inexhaustible sources of perfection ! — • 
Addison* 

God's Angels. 

How many times have we been strangely and unaccount- 
ably preserved in sudden and dangerous falls? And it is well 
if we did not impute that preservation to chance, or to our 
own wisdom or strength. Not so : God, perhaps, gave his 
angels charge over us, and in their hands they bore us up. 
Indeed, men of the world will always impute such deliverances 
to accident or second causes. 

When a violent disease, supposed incurable, is totally and 
suddenly removed, it is by no means improbable that this is 
effected by the ministry of an angel. And perhaps it is to the 
same cause that a remedy is unaccountably suggested either 
to the sick person, or some one attending upon him, by which 
he is entirely cured. 

It seems what are usually called divine dreams may be 
frequently ascribed to angels. We have a remarkable instance 
of this kind related by one who will hardly be called an enthu- 
siast, for he was a heathen, a philosopher, and an emperor : I 
mean Marcus Antoninus. " In his meditations, he solemnly 
thanks God for revealing to him when he was at Cajeta, in a 
dream, what totally cured the bloody flux, which none of his 
physicians were able to heal." And why may we not suppose 
that God gave him this notice by the ministry of an angel ? — 
yoh?i Wesley. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



177 



Presence of Spirits. 

It appears to me no way contrary to reason to believe that 
the happy departed spirits see and know all they would wish, 
and are divinely permitted to know. In this, Mr. Wesley (the 
founder of Methodism) is of the same mind, — and that they 
are concerned for the dear fellow pilgrims whom they have left 
behind. I cannot but believe they are. Nor doth it seem 
contrary to reason to suppose a spirit in glory can turn its eye 
with as much ease, and look on any object below, as a mother 
can look through a window, and see the actions of her chil- 
dren in the court beneath it. If bodies have a language by 
which they can convey their thoughts to each other, though 
sometimes at a distance, have spirits no language, think you, 
by which they can converse with our spirits, and by impressions 
on the mind, speak to us as easily as before they did by the 
tongue? And what can interrupt either the presence, commu- 
nication, or sight of a spirit ? 

" Walls within walls no more its passage bar 
Than unopposing space of liquid air. " 

Though it is allowed we may have communion with angels, 
various are the objections raised against the belief of our com- 
munion with that other part of the heavenly family, — the 
disembodied spirits of the just. If there is joy throughout all 
the realms above, yea, " more joy over one sinner that repenteth 
than over the ninety and nine which went not astray, " how 
evident it is to an impartial eye that the state of both the one 
and the other must be known there, together, with the pro- 
gress of each individual ! Have not spirits faculties suited to 
spirits, by which we may suppose they can as easily discern our 
soul as we could discern their body when they were in the 
same state as ourself? If " he maketh his angels spirits, and 
his ministers a flame of fire, " cannot a spirit be with me in a 
moment, as easily as a stroke from an electrical machine can 
convey the fire for many miles in one moment, through thou- 



i 7 8 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



sands of bodies, if properly linked together ? — Mrs. Mary 
Fletcher (an early English Methodist). 

Love of Truth. 

He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, 
will proceed by loving his own sect or church, better than 
Christianity, and by loving himself better than all. — S. T. Cole- 

ridge. 

The true Priest — Reformer — and one Army for Right. 

We have repeatedly endeavored to explain that all sorts of 
Heroes are intrinsically of the same material; that, given a 
great soul, open to the Divine Significance of Life, then there 
is given a man fit to sing of this, to fight and work for this* in 
a great, victorious, and enduring manner; there is given a 
Hero — the outward shape of whom will depend on the time 
and the environment he finds himself in. The Priest too, as 
I understand it, is a kind of Prophet ; in him there is required 
to be a light of inspiration, as we name it. He is the Uniter 
of the people with the Unseen Holy. He is the Spiritual 
Captain of the people ; as the true Prophet is their spiritual 
King, with many captains ; he guides them heavenward, by 
wise guidance through this earth and its work. The ideal of 
him is, that he too be what we can call a voice from the unseen 
heaven, — -the " open Secret of the Universe," which so few have 
an eye for ! He is the Prophet shorn of his more awful splen- 
dor ; burning with mild equable radiance, as the enlightener of 
daily life. This is the ideal of a Priest in old times, in these, 
n all times. One knows very well that, in reducing ideals to 
practice, great latitude of toleration is needed. But a Priest 
who is not this at all, who does not any longer aim or try to be 
this, is a character of — whom we had rather not speak. * * 
Nay, I may ask, is not every true Reformer, by the nature of 
him, a Priest first of all ? He appeals to Heaven's invisible 
j ustice against Earth's visible force ; knows that it, the invisible, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



179 



is strong and alone strong. He is a believer in the divine truth 
of things ; a Seer, seeing through the shews of things ; a wor- 
shipper, in one way or the other, of the divine truth of things. 

* * * Every man is not only a learner but a doer ; he 
learns with the mind given him, what has been ; but with the 
same mind he discovers farther, he invents and devises some- 
what of his own. No man believes or can believe exactly 
what his grandfather believed ; he enlarges somewhat, by fresh 
discovery, his view of the Universe, and consequently his 
Theorem of the Universe, which is an injifiite Universe, and 
can never be embraced wholly or finally in any conceivable 
enlargement. * * He finds somewhat that was credible to 
his grandfather, incredible to him, false and inconsistent with 
some new thing he had discovered or observed. * * * 
So with all beliefs whatsoever in this world, all Systems of 
Belief, and Systems of Practice that spring from these. * * 
Surely it were mournful enough to look only at this face of the 
matter, and find in all human opinions and arrangements 
merely the fact that they were uncertain, temporary, subject 
to the law of death ! At bottom it is not so ; all death, here 
too we find, is but of the body, not of the essence of the soul ; 
all destruction, by violent revolution or however, is but a new 
creation on a wider scale. Odinism was Valor ; Christianity 
was Humility, a nobler kind of valor. No thought that ever 
dwelt honestly as true in the heart of man, but was an honest 
insight into God's truth on man's part, and has an essential 
truth in it which endures through all changes, an everlasting 
possession for us all. 

And on the other hand, what a melancholy notion is that 
which has to represent all men, in all countries and times 
except our own, as having spent their lives in blind con- 
demnable error, mere lost pagans, Scandinavians, Mahometans, 
only that we might have the true ultimate knowledge ! All 
generations of men were lost and wrong, only that this present 
little section of a generation might be saved and right ! They 
all marched forward there, all generations since the beginning 



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CHAPTERS FROM THE 



of the world, like the Russian soldiers into the ditch of 
Schweidnitz Fort, only to fill up the ditch with their dead 
bodies that we might march over and take the place ! It is an 
incredible hypothesis. 

Such incredible hypothesis we have seen maintained with 
fierce emphasis, and this or the other man, with his sect, march- 
ing as over the dead bodies of all men, towards sure victory ; 
but when he too, with his hypothesis and ultimate infallible 
creeds, sank into the ditch and became a dead body, what was 
to be said ? Withal it is an important fact in the nature of 
man that he tends to reckon his own insight as final, and goes 
upon it as such. He will always do it, I suppose, in one or 
the other way ; but it must be in some wider and wiser way 
than this. Are not all true men that live or that ever lived, 
soldiers of the same army; enlisted under Heaven's captaincy 
to do battle against the same enemy, the empire of Darkness 
and Wrong ? Why should we misknow each other, fight not 
against the enemy, but against ourselves, from mere difference 
of uniform? All uniforms shall be good, so they hold in them 
true and valiant men. All fashions of arms, the Arab turban 
and swift scimetar, Thor's strong hammer, smiting down 
Jotuns, shall be welcome. Luther's battle-voice, Dante's 
march-melody, all genuine things are with us, not against us. 
We are all under one Captain, soldiers of the same host. — • 
TJiomas Carlyle. 



What Religious Teachers Should Do. 

We no longer look on the different creeds of the world, as 
did the martyrs of old, as being absolutely true or absolutely 
false, the service of God himself or of the Devil himself. 

We see them to be only steps upward in an infinite ascent; 
only the substitution for a lower of a higher but still all-imper- 
fect ideal of the Holy One. Doubtless we are nearer the true 
judgment. Doubtless also it was well that of old, m the days 
of the stake and the rack, men should have seen these things 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



l8l 



differently ; for few indeed could have borne to die, clearly- 
seeing their persecutors to be only partially mistaken in their 
own creed — the creed for which they were enduring torture 
and agony — only one of the thousand "little systems" of 
earth, — 

" Which have their day and cease to be, " 

a " broken light" from the inaccessible Sun of Truth. * * 

But we, in our day, have reached a different pass. We 
seem to have quitted the region of light and darkness, truth 
and falsehood, and have come to a land — 

" Where it is always afternoon." 

There is among the highest order of minds a disposition to 
accept finally a condition which may be designated as one of 
reverential skepticism. * * * A sort of direful fashion has 
set in to praise whatever seems vaguest in doctrine, and weak- 
est in faith, as if therefore it were necessarily wisest and most 
philosophic. We look distrustfully on any one who has not 
dissolved away in some mental crucible all solid belief in a per- 
sonal God, and a conscious immortality into certain fluid and 
gaseous ideas of eternities and immensities. We assume it 
contentedly as proven that the " limitations of rel gious thought" 
make it as hopeless for us to find a faith which will keep alive our 
souls, as an elixir vitce to keep alive our bodies. We wander 
to and fro hopelessly through the wilderness of doubt ; and if 
any come to tell us of a land flowing with milk and honey, 
the glory of all lands, which they have found beyond, we dis- 
miss them with a complacent sigh, even if they bring back 
noblest fruits from their Canaan. 

There is surely great error in this state of feeling. 
Though infallible knowledge is not for men — though we have 
neither faculties to receive it nor language to convey it — yet it 
is far indeed from established that our powers fall short of 
attaining such a share of knowledge of divine things as may 
suffice for the primary wants of our souls. We need such 
knowledge for the higher part of our nature, as much as we 



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need bread and clothing for the lower. It is the greatest want 
of the greatest creature : and if indeed it have no supply, then 
is the analogy of the universe broken off. There is a pre- 
sumption of incalculable force that these cravings which arise 
in the profoundest depths of our souls, which we can never put 
away, and on which our moral health depends, are not to be 
forever denied their natural satisfaction, while the ravens are 
fed and the grass of the field drinks in the dew. We have 
indeed asked too much hitherto. We have cried like children 
for the moon of an unattainable infallibility. We have called 
for systems of theology dissecting the mysteries of our Maker's 
nature and attributes. But because these things are denied us, 
are we therefore to despair of knowing those fundamental 
truths which we must either gain, or else morally and spirit- 
ually die ? * * * 

It is a simple induction from the order of the universe that 
the soul of man is not the only thing left without its food, its 
light, its guide, its soul-sufficing end and aim. * * 

We must not, dare not, doubt that it will be to a larger, 
higher, purer truth the human race is being led onward, and 
that that truth is safer than all the well-tried errors of the past. 
The old Ragnarok, the " Twilight of the Gods, " in which our 
heathen forefathers believed, may be coming now ; but there 
will be a glorious sunrise afterward. The " ages of faith" are 
not behind us, but before us. 

The task then of the religious teacher of our time is to 
prepare and strengthen men for the future % to give them such 
faith in God and reverence for his law, independently of tradi- 
tional creeds, as shall avail them when these are overwhelmed. 
— Frances Power Cobhe. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 1 83 



LEIGH HUNT. 



The Religion of the Heart. 

God, — which is the name for the great First Cause of the 
Universe, for the power which has set it in motion, which 
adorns it with beauty, and which, in this our portion of it, and 
through the mystery of time and trouble, incites us to attain to 
the welfare and the joy which are therefore to be considered 
the purpose of final existence, here or hereafter, — God has 
written his religion in the heart, for growing wisdom to read 
perfectly, and time to make triumphant. 

Without this First Divine Writing, and this power to out- 
grow barbarous misconceptions of it, no writing claiming to be 
divine, could be estimated, or understood. The human being 
would have no language to correspond with its meaning, no 
faculties to recognize whatever divineness it contained, or to 
reject what was mixed with it of unworthy. Decline its arbi- 
tration, when ascertained by the only final evidence of its cor- 
rectness, — that of a thorough harmony with itself, — and there 
is no folly, cruelty, or impiety of belief, which the mind, how- 
ever unwillingly, and to its ultimate confusion, shall not be led 
to take for religion. Admit the arbitration so ascertained, and 
such mistakes become impossible. Doctrines revolting to the 
heart are not made to endure, however mixed up they may 
be with lessons the most divine. They contain the seeds of 
their dissolution. They cannot even be thoroughly well taught. 
Something inconsistent, something quarrelsome, something dis- 
satisfied with itself, or uncharitable to others, something uneasy, 
unlovely, or unpersuasive, will sooner or later disclose the 
incongruity, and leave the gentle and coherent wisdom to be 
found the only guide. 

With a like necessity for relief from the otherwise imper- 
fect conclusions of the understanding, mankind have been so 
constituted, that for the most part they cannot without uneasi- 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



ness dissociate the ideas of order and design, of means taken 
and ends contemplated, of progressive humanity and a divine 
intention. They are conscious of a difference between mind 
and body, between the greatness of their intellectual aspira- 
tions and the smallness of their knowledge ; and most of all, 
between their capacity for happiness and the amount of it 
which they realize : and for all these reasons they desire a 
Giver and a Comforter, whom they thank in joy, and turn for 
support to in affliction, and feel to be the only fulfiller and 
security of that triumph over the visible and the mortal, which 
their nature has been made to desire. 

Impressed more and more with a sense of the Great Benefi- 
cence, in proportion as we become intimate with his works, the 
holders of the Religion of the Heart believe, that part of his 
divine occupation is to work ends befitting his goodness, out 
of different forms of matter, and out of transient, qualified, 
and unmalignant evils; probably to the endless multiplica- 
tion of heavens. 

They believe, that in the world which they inhabit, its 
human beings are among the instruments with which the Great 
Beneficence visibly operates, to purposes of this nature ; that 
is to say, with manifest change and advancement : and they 
are of opinion, that wherever a so-called divinely-inspired man 
has appeared, the inspiration has been justly attributed to his 
unusual participation of the beneficent impulse, in proportion 
as the lessons which he has taught have been effective, reason- 
able and lasting. 

They are of opinion, that enough of these lessons have 
been given mankind to furnish them with right principles of 
conduct, mental and bodily ; but that the particulars of con- 
duct into which those principles should be carried out, are too 
commonly lost sight of in the supposed sufficiency of general 
precepts, perfect in spirit, but incessantly violated for want of 
reduction to such particulars. It is therefore their opinion, 
that this want ought to be zealously and constantly supplied ; 
that health of mind and health of body are to be professedly 



BIBLE OF THE AOES. 



cultivated in unison, as the only sure means of completing the 
rational and cheerful creature, which the human organization, 
in empowering him, requires him to become ; that some of 
what are called minor morals, or those affecting temper and 
manners, deserve, on that account, to be known for what they 
are, — the particulars of great ones, — the everyday moments of 
which life is made, household moments especially, being deeply 
concerned in the recognition ; that any further insistment on 
the necessity of such points of faith as have divided and scan- 
dalized the world, and maintained the worst notions of the 
•divinest things, is not only worse than useless to man, but 
impious (however unwillingly so) towards God ; and that the 
great business of Faith is to believe in the goodness of the 
Creator and all his works ; of Hope, to look for the thorough 
manifestation of it in time or eternity; and of Charity, to do 
and think everything meanwhile in the spirit of kindness. 

For they believe that the Divine Being is a wholly good 
and beneficent being ; wholly and truly the Great Beneficence ; 
not to be thought of in any other light ; free and distinct, in 
essence, and to all final purpose, from admixture of the least 
evil through which he works, as the light itself is from the sub- 
stance which it penetrates. And though they hold it to be as 
impossible for his human creatures entirely to comprehend him, 
as it is for their arms to embrace infinitude, yet inasmuch as 
they are his work, and gifted by him with affections, they may 
feel conscious of him with their hearts on the side at which 
his infinitude touches humanity, and without presuming to con- 
ceive any portion of him in human likeness, consider the 
Author of their Being as including a Divine Paternity. 

Nor do the holders of these opinions the less hope for a 
heaven elsewhere, or for an endless succsssion of heavens, or 
for an equal measure of happiness for all who have lived and 
suffered in past times, let earth be rendered never so heavenly. 
For what marvel, deeply considered, is more marvellous than 
another? And who shall limit the possibilities of adjustment, 



12 



i86 



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during the endlessness of space and time, in the hands of the 
maker of the stars ? 

On all these accounts, it is their persuasion that every 
human being, for his own sake, and (not to speak it presump- 
tuously) for God's, is bound to maintain all his faculties, mental 
and bodily, in their healthiest, hopefullest, most active, and 
most affectionate condition. 

Aspiration in the Morning. 

In the name of the Great Beneficence, to whom be all rev- 
erence, with a filial trust. 

My first duty this day is to delay, or slur over, nothing 
which I am bound in conscience to perform. 

The hour has come, at which it is therefore time for me to 
rise. 

Thou, O my heart, biddest me rise, for the sake of others 
as well as myself. 

Because on thee the Divine Spirit has written the laws, 
which love teaches knowledge to read : 

And because they tell me, that duty must be done, and 
that affection must be earned by good offices. 

May I discharge, throughout the day, every other such 
duty as conscience enjoins me: 

Beginning the day with a kind voice to others; 

And ending it with no reproach to myself. 

Of the Great Benefactors of the World. 

Let us be grateful, without idolatry, without worship of any 
sort, to the memories of those divine men who from time to 
time have advanced the human species in knowledge and good- 
ness. They partook of our infirmities ; but the divine particle 
was stronger within them; they may have been misrepresented 
in some instances by their followers • their history may have 
been mingled with unworthy fables ; they themselves, the best 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



187 



of them, from excessive sensibility, and their very impatience 
with what was wrong, may have failed in becoming patterns of 
humanity. But it is our duty to separate what is good and 
likely in their history, from that which is of doubtful character. 
They who loved us, and we who love and honor them, have 
equally a right to the benefit of the separation. 

Let us reverence and love all who have acted or suffered 
in the great cause of beneficence. 

Let us reverence the bright names in dark periods, the 
remote philosophers of Europe and Asia; Confucius in partic- 
alar, the first great light of rational piety and benignant 
intercourse. 

Let us reverence our latest benefactors, the exposers of 
intolerance, the overthrowers of cruel substitutions of force for 
argument, the furtherers of the love of reason. 

Let us reverence the great teachers of experiment, the libe- 
rators of the hands of knowledge ; and their disciples, the 
movers of the earth. 

Let us reverence and love those extraordinary men of 
action, the Alfreds, Epaminondases and their like, who have 
been busiest in the thick of the world, and yet it polluted them 
not ; thus enabling us, for ever, to refute the sophistries of the 
worldly. 

Let us reverence and love Socrates, who next to the great 
philosopher of China shewed the way to this union of the 
active and contemplative; who was the first among Europeans 
to teach us, that philosophy does mot require lofty occasions 
on which to exert itself, but may become a part of the daily 
business of life. 

Let us reverence and love Epictetus and Antoninus, who, 
though the one was a slave and the other an emperor, alike told 
ns to bear and forbear ; being self-denying to themselves, and 
indulgent to others ; and teaching beneficence, not only towards 
friends, and men in general, but towards enemies and those 
who ill treat us. 

Let us reverence and love above all, their martyred brother 



1 88 



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Jesus ; not because he was in all respects their superior, or to 
be looked upon as that " perfect man," which, with an injurious 
want of sincerity, he has been pronounced ; for his tempera- 
ment was less under his control, and sometimes contradicted 
his doctrines ; but because he was the man who felt most for 
the wants of his fellow-creatures, and who saw deepest into 
their remedy; the man fullest of love for the loving, of for- 
giveness for the ignorant, of pity for the unfortunate and the 
outcast; the identifier of one's neighbor with every human 
being; the freer of spirit from letter; the proclaimer of 
the rights of the poor. May he never be deprived of the love 
and honor that are his due, by having had the claims for 
them stretched beyond the limits of conscience and common 
sense. 

We should consider it incumbent upon us, that no evil 
endured for the sake of mankind by any such men as these, at 
any time, or in any country, should lose its good effects, as far 
as our efforts can realize them. But faith in their names, with- 
out imitation of their virtues, is often worse than nothing. 

The Great Means and Ends of Endeavor. 

The great means and ends of all Social Endeavor are 
these : — 

The Means, — Unbounded Inquiry; Unchallenged Rights 
of Conscience; Universal Education (including Knowledge of 
the Bodily Frame) ; Universal Extinction of the Doctrine of 
Eear by that of Love; Universal and Reasonable Employment ; 
Universal Leisure. 

The Ends, — Universal Healthy Enjoyment of all the Fac- 
ulties, Bodily and Mental ; Universal Love of the Beautiful ; 
Universal Brotherhood ; Universal Hope of Immortality ; Uni- 
versal Trust in the Goodness and All-Reconciling Futurities of 
God. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



Rules of Life and Manners. 

1. To reverence God and his purposes with a filial trust. 

2. To study, as far as in us lies, his creation, and be sen- 
sible of its beauties. 

3. To consider duty our first object, and the highest war- 
rant of our pleasures. 

4. To delay, or slur over, nothing which it is incumbent on 
us to perform. 

5. To keep our bodies clean, things about us in order, and 
our appearance decent and unaffected. 

6. To keep our blood pure with exercise and fresh air, and 
to be as conversant always with the air as befits creatures that 
exist only by means of it. 

7. To avoid oppressing, exciting, or drowsing ourselves with 
over-eating, or drinking, or with narcotics. 

8. To consider kind manners, and a willingness to please 
and be pleased, not superficial, but substantial duties. 

9. To hold censorious talk dishonorable to the motives, and 
in a creation so full of interest, disgraceful to the under- 
standing. 

10. To set examples, in word and deed, of the truthfulness 
that we demand from others ; not indeed saying all that we 
think at all times (which would be inhuman), but never saying 
anything we do not think, or doing anything with duplicity. 

11. To cultivate large-heartedness ; endeavoring to think 
and to do on all occasions the reverse of what is petty and 
self-seeking, even at the hazard of misconstruction. 

1 2. To consider, nevertheless, indifference to misconstruc- 
tion as a presumption and of bad example. 

13. To inflict no pain on any creature for the sake of a 
pleasure. 

14. To shrink from no pain to ourselves, which in whole- 
someness or in kindness ought to be met. 

15. To visit the sick, and others who need comfort. 

16. To encourage unbounded inquiry, particularly into the 



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causes of social evils ; and to do what we can towards their 
alleviation and extinction. 

17. To consider the healthy, and therefore, as far as mor- 
tality permits, happy exercise of all the faculties with which 
we have been gifted, as the self-evident final purpose of our 
being, so far as existence in this world is concerned; and as 
constituting therefore the right of every individual human crea- 
ture, and the main earthly object of all social endeavor. 

18. To reflect at the same time, that man's hope of immor- 
tality is also the gift of his Creator ; that the certainty of it in 
his life, might in some way or other be inconsistent with the 
very perfection of its happiness when attained ; and that in the 
meantime, the hope of that happiness for all is a heavenlier 
thing, and more suitable to a good heart, than assumptions of 
certainty barbarized with unhappiness to any. 

19. To bear in mind, that Morals mean Habits • that good 
as well as bad habits are acquirable ; and that satisfaction, 
instead of regret, increases with their advancement. 

20. Never to forget, that as the habits of childhood com- 
mence with its existence, they are the most acquirable of any, 
and are of all the most important. 

Of Religion. 

Religion {religio — religare, to rebind) is the rebinding of 
conscience, with a belief in its divine origin. 

Religion is as natural to man as his sight of the stars, and 
his sense of a power greater than his own. 

But systems of religion vary with successive generations ; 
and though it becomes all men to entertain a certain reverence 
for the past, and to regard its sufferings, and perhaps its mis- 
takes, as having been good for the future, yet it is not in the 
nature of the feelings which God has given us, that any good 
heart, in proportion as it reflects on the subject, should be con- 
tent with any system of religion inferior to its notions of what 
is best 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



I 9 I 



With no religion at all, men are in danger 01 falling into a 
mechanical dullness, or into preposterous self-worship, or into 
heart-hardening abandonment to the senses. 

With a religion that is unworthy of them, they make God 
himself unworthy, and fill their belief with cruelty and melan- 
choly, with dispute and scandal. 

With a religion satisfactory to the heart, men love and do 
honor to God, make brothers of their fellow-creatures, are ani- 
mated in their endeavors, comforted in their sufferings, and 
encouraged to hope everything from the future. 

Religion is reverence without terror, and humility without 
meanness. It is a sense of the unknown world, without dis- 
paragement to the known; an admiration of the material 
beauties of the universe, without forgetfulness of the spiritual ; 
an enhancement in both instances, of each by each. 

Religion doubles every sense of duty, great and small; 
from that to the whole human race, down to manners towards 
individuals, and even to appearance in ourselves ; from purity 
of heart to cleanliness of person. 

But it does all without gloom or oppressiveness. It does 
not desire us to reflect in any painful manner or to any painful 
extent, unless some necessity for the good of others demands 
it ; and then it would terminate the pain with the necessity. 

The very uncertainties of a right religion are diviner than 
the supposed certainties of a wrong one ; for its hopes for all 
are unmixed with terrible beliefs for any. 

Religion, earthwards, begins with reverence to offspring 
before they are born ; and heavenwards, it sees no more end 
to its hopes than to the number of the stars. 

The Reconciliation Between Conservatism and Radi- 
calism. 

These admissions will perhaps be held to imply, that the 
current theology should be passively accepted ; or, at any rate, 
should not be actively opposed. Why, it ' may be asked, 
if all creeds have an average fitness to their times and places, 



192 



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should we not rest content with that to which we are born ? 
If the established belief contains an essential truth — if the 
forms under which it presents this truth, though intrinsically 
bad, are extrinsically good — if the abolition of these forms 
would be at present detrimental to the great majority — nay, if 
there are scarcely any to whom the ultimate and most abstract 
belief can furnish an adequate rule of life, surely it is wrong 
for the present at least, to propagate this ultimate and most 
abstract belief. 

The reply is, though existing religious ideas and institutions 
have an average adaptation to the characters of the people who 
live under them, yet as these characters are ever changing, the 
adaptation is ever becoming imperfect, and the ideas and insti- 
tutions need remodeling with a frequency proportionate to the 
rapidity of the change. Hence, while it is requisite that free 
play should be given to conservative thought and action, pro- 
gressive thought and action must also have free play. Without 
the agency of both, there cannot be those continual readapta- 
tions which orderly progress demands. 

Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest 
truth, lest it should be too much in advance of the time, may 
reassure himself by looking at his acts from an impersonal 
point of view. Let him duly realize the fact that opinion is 
the agency through which character adapts external arrange- 
ments to itself — that his opinion rightly forms part of this 
agency — is a unit of force, constituting, with other such units, 
the general power which works our social changes ; and he will 
perceive that he may properly give full utterance to his inner- 
most convictions, leaving it to produce what effect it may. It 
is not for nothing that he has in him these sympathies with 
some principles and repugnance to others. He, with all his 
capacities and aspirations and beliefs, is not an accident, but a 
product of the time. He must remember that while he is a 
descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future ; and that 
his thoughts are as children born to him, which he may not 
carelessly let die. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



193 



Not as adventitious, therefore, will the wise man regard the 
faith which is in him. The highest truth he sees he will fear- 
lessly utter ; knowing that, let what may come of it, he is thus 
playing his right part in the world — knowing that if he can 
effect the change he aims at — well ; if not — well also ; though 
not so well. — Herbert Spencer. 

A Man Conquered by Vice. 

If we wish to know who is the most degraded, and most 
wretched of human beings; if it be any object to gauge the 
dimensions of wretchedness, and to see how deep the miseries 
of man can reach ; look for the man who has practiced a vice 
so long that he curses it and clings to it ; that he pursues it 
because he feels a great law of his nature driving him on 
towards it ; but, reaching it, knows that it will gnaw his heart, 
and tear his vitals, and make him roll himself in the dust in 
anguish. — Sydney Smith. 

Religion Pervading Nature. 

It is a meek and blessed influence, stealing in, as it were, 
unawares upon the heart ; it comes quietly and without excite- 
ment ; it has no terror, no gloom as it approaches ; it does not 
rouse up the passions ; it is untrammeled by the creeds, and 
unshadowed by the superstitions of man ; it is fresh from the 
hands of the Author, glowing from the immediate presence of 
the Great Spirit, which pervades and quickens it. It is written 
on the arched sky ; it looks out from every star ; it is on the 
sailing cloud, and in the invisible wind ; it is among the hills and 
valleys of the earth, where the shrubless mountain-top pierces 
the thin atmosphere of eternal winter, or where the mighty 
forest, with its dark waves of green foliage, fluctuates before 
the strong wind. It is spread out like a legible language, upon 
the broad face of the unsleeping ocean ; it is the poetry of 
nature. It is this which uplifts the spirit within us, until it is 



194 



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strong enough to overlook the shadow of our place of proba- 
tion ; which breaks, link after link, the chain that binds us to 
materiality ; aud which opens to our imagination a world of 
spiritual beauty and holiness. — Ruskin. 

Heart Power. 

A man's force in the world, other things being equal, is just 
in the ratio of the force and strength of his heart. A full- 
hearted man is always a powerful man ; if he be erroneous, 
then he is powerful for error ; if the thing is in his very heart, 
he is sure to make it notorious, even though it be a downright 
falsehood. Let a man be never so ignorant, if his heart be 
full of love to a cause he becomes a powerful man for that 
object, because he has heart-power. A man may be deficient 
in education, in many niceties so much looked upon in society ; 
but once give him a good strong heart and there is no mistake 
about his power. Let him have a heart full to the brim with 
an object, and that man will do the thing, or else he will die 
gloriously defeated, and will glory in his defeat. Heart is 
Power. — Sfinrgeon. 

Varnished Evils. 

If the devil comes to my door with his horns visible, I will 
never let him in ; but if he comes with his hat on, as a respect- 
able gentleman, he is at once admitted. This may be quaint, 
but it is true. Many a man has taken in an evil thing, because 
it has been varnished and glossed over, and not apparently an 
evil ; and he has thought in his heart there is not much harm 
in it ; so he has let in the little thing, and it has been like the 
breaking forth of water — the first drop has brought a torrent 
after it — the beginning of a fearful end. — Spurgeon. 

Death of the Young a Light to Heaven. 

When Death strikes down the innocent and the young, for 
every fragile form from which he lets the panting spirit free, a 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



195 



hundred virtues rise, in shapes of mercy, charity, and love, to 
walk the world and bless it. Of every tear that sorrowing 
mortals shed on such green graves, some good is born, some 
gentler nature comes. In the destroyer's steps there spring 
up bright creations that defy his power, and his dark path 
becomes a way of light to Heaven. — Charles Dickens. 

Rational Faith. 

Faith is the free exercise of the mind, resting only on t/ie 
discernment of the truth ; just as sight is the free exercise of the 
eye, resting only on the discernment of the light ; and no man 
can possibly believe, in submission to authority, that which he 
does not discern to be true, any more than he can behold the 
sun at midnight in obedience to a positive command. A man 
may indeed be taught to keep his eyes shut, and by discipline 
and training, may be brought not only to say, but even to 
fancy, that he sees whatever he is told ought to be seen, dis- 
trusting his own natural perceptions. A man may also be 
trained to look only and always through lenses of a prescribed 
color and form, and to disuse and supersede his unassisted 
vision. So also may men, yea, nations and generations of men j 
be kept in more or less ignorance, distrust, and neglect of their 
own faculty of discerning what is true, and thus be made to 
surrender, or never to know, the right of private judgment ; so 
that even those things which are most thoroughly believed by 
such men, are believed, not because they are conscious of their 
truth, but because they have the sanction of authority. — John 
Robertson. 

The Future that Awaits Us. 

"We must also understand, that the words dark and light, 
which in this world of appearance we use metaphorically to 
express good and evil, must be understood literally when 
speaking of that other world where everything will be seen as 



196 



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it is. Goodness is truth, and truth is light; and wickedness is 
falsehood, and falsehood is darkness, and so it will be seen to 
be. Those who have not the light of truth to guide them will 
wander darkly through this valley of the shadow of death; 
those in whom the light of goodness shines will dwell in the 
light, which is inherent in themselves. The former will be in 
the kingdom of darkness, the latter in the kingdom of light. 
All the records existing of the blessed spirits that have appeared, 
ancient or modern, exhibit them as robed in light, whilst their 
anger or sorrow is symbolized by their darkness. Now there 
appears to me nothing incomprehensible in this view of the 
future ; on the contrary, it is the only one which I ever found 
myself capable of conceiving or reconciling with the justice 
and mercy of our Creator. He does not punish us, we punish 
ourselves ; we have built up a heaven or a hell to our own 
liking, and we carry it with us. The fire that forever burns 
without consuming is the fiery evil in which we have chosen 
our part ; and the heaven in which we shall dwell will be the 
heavenly peace which will dwell in us. We are our own judges 
and our own chastisers. 

But this self-pronounced sentence we are led to hope is not 
final, nor does it seem consistent with the love and mercy of 
God that it should be so. There must be few, indeed, who 
leave this earth fit for heaven; for although the immediate 
frame of mind in which dissolution takes place is probably very 
important, it is surely a pernicious error, encouraged by jail 
chaplains and philanthropists, that a late repentance and a few 
parting prayers can purify a soul sullied by years of wicked- 
ness. Would we at once receive such an one into our intimate 
communion and love ? Should we not require time for the 
stains of vice to be washed away, and habits of virtue to be 
formed ? Assuredly we should ! And how can we imagine 
that the purity of heaven is to be sullied by that approximation 
that the purity of earth would forbid ? It would be cruel to 
say, irrational to think, that this late repentence is of no avail; 
it is doubtless so far of avail that the straining upwards and the 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



197 



heavenly aspirations of the parting soul are carried with it, so 
that when it is free, instead of choosing the darkness, it will 
flee to as much light as is in itself; and be ready, through the 
mercy of God and the ministering of brighter spirits, to receive 
more. * * * 

The question that will now naturally arise, and which I am 
bound to answer, is, how have these views been formed ? and 
what is the authority for them ? And the answer I have to 
make will startle many minds, when I say they have been gath- 
ered from two sources ; first, and chiefly, from the state in 
which those spirits appear to be, and sometimes avow them- 
selves to be, who, after quitting the earth, return to it and 
make themselves visible to the living ; and secondly, from the 
revelations of numerous somnambules of the highest order, 
which entirely conform in all cases, not only with the revela- 
tions of the dead, but with each other. I do not mean to 
imply, when I say this, that I consider the question finally 
settled, as to whether somnambules are really clear-seers or 
only visionaries ; nor that I have by any means established the 
fact that the dead do actually sometimes return ; but I am 
obliged to beg the question for the moment, since whether these 
sources be pure or impure, it is from them the information has 
been collected. It is true, that these views are extremely con- 
formable with those entertained by Plato and his school of 
philosophers ; and also with those of the mystics of a later 
age ; but the latter certainly, and the former probably, built up 
their systems on the same foundation : and I am very far from 
using the term mystics in the opprobrious, or at least con- 
temptuous tone, in which it has of late years been uttered in 
this country ; for although abounding in errors, as regarded the 
concrete, and although their want of an inductive methodology 
led them constantly astray in the region of the real, they were 
sublime teachers in that of the ideal ; and they seem to have 
been endowed with a wonderful insight into this veiled depart- 
ment of our nature. — Catharine Crowe. 



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The Reign of Law. 

The Reign of Law — is this, then, the reign under which we 
live ? Yes, in a sense it is. There is no denying it. The whole 
world around us, and the whole world within us, are ruled by 
Law. Our very spirits are subject to it — those spirits which 
yet seem so spiritual, so subtle, so free. How often in the 
darkness do they feel the restraining bounds within which they 
move, conditions out of which they cannot think ! The per- 
ception of this is growing in the consciousness of men. It 
grows with the growth of knowledge ; it is the delight, the 
reward, the goal of Science. From Science it passes into every 
domain of thought, and invades, amongst others, the Theology 
of the Church. And so we see the men of Theology coming 
out to a parley with the men of Science, — a white flag in their 
hands, and saying, "If you will let us alone, we will do the 
same by you. Keep to your own province, do not enter ours. 
The Reign of Law which you proclaim, we admit — outside 
these walls, but not within them : — let there be peace between 
us. " But this will never do. There can be no such treaty 
dividing the domain of Truth. Every one Truth is connected 
with every other Truth in this great universe of God. The 
connection may be one of infinite subtlety, and apparent 
distance, running, as it were, underground for a long way, but 
always asserting itself at last, somewhere and at some time. 
No bargaining, no fencing off the ground, no form of process, 
will avail to bar this right of way. Blessed right, enforced by 
blessed power ! Every truth, which is truth indeed, is charged 
with its own consequences, its own analogies, its own sugges- 
tions. These will not be kept outside any artificial boundary; 
they will range over the whole field of thought, nor is there 
any corner of it from which they can be warned away. 

And therefore we must cast a sharp eye indeed on every 
form of words which professes to represent a scientific truth. 
If it be really true in one department of thought, the chances 
are that it will have its bearing on every other. And if it be 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 1 99 

not true, but erroneous, its effect will be of a corresponding 
character ; for there is a brotherhood of Error as close as the 
brotherhood of Truth. Therefore, to accept as a truth that 
which is not a truth, or to fail in distinguishing the sense in 
which a proposition may be true, from other senses in 
which it is not true, is an evil having consequences which are 
indeed incalculable. There are subjects on which one mistake 
of this kind will poison all the wells of truth, and affect with 
fatal error the whole circle of our thoughts. 

It is against this danger that some men would erect a feeble 
barrier, by defending the position that Science and Religion 
may be, and ought to be, kept entirely separate : that they 
belong to wholly different spheres of thought, and that the 
ideas which prevail in the one province have no relation to 
those which prevail in the other. This is a doctrine offering 
many temptations to many minds. It is grateful to religious 
men who are afraid of being thought to be afraid of Science. 
To these, and to all who are troubled to reconcile what they 
have been taught to believe with what they have come to know, 
the doctrine affords a natural and convenient escape. There 
is but one objection to it — but that is the fatal objection — that 
it is not true. The spiritual world and the intellectual world 
are not separated after this fashion ; and the notion that they 
are so separated does but encourage men to accept in each, 
ideas which will at last be found to be false in both. The 
truth is that there is no branch of human inquiry, however 
purely physical, which is no more than the word branch implies ; 
none which is not connected through endless ramifications with 
every other, and especially that which is the root and centre of 
them all. If He who formed the mind be one with Him who 
is the Orderer of all things concerning which that mind is occu- 
pied, there can be no end to the points of contact between our 
different conceptions of them, of Him and of ourselves. 

The instinct which impels us to seek for harmony in the 
truths of Science and the truths of Religion, is a higher instinct 
and a truer one than the disposition which leads us to evade 



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the difficulty by pretending that there is no relation between 
them. For after all it is a pretence and nothing more. No 
man who thoroughly accepts a principle in the philosophy of 
nature which he feels to be inconsistent with a doctrine of 
Religion, can help having his belief in that doctrine shaken 
and undermined. We may believe and we must believe, both 
in Nature and Religion, many things we cannot understand ; 
but we cannot really believe two propositions which are felt to 
be contradictory. It helps us nothing in such a difficulty to 
say that the one proposition belongs to Reason and the 
other to Faith. The endeavor to reconcile them is a 
necessity of the mind. We are right in thinking that, if they 
are both indeed true, they can be reconciled, and if they 
really are fundamentally opposed, they cannot both be true. 
That is to say, there must be some error in our manner of con- 
ception in one or in the other, or in both. At the very best, 
each can represent only some partial and imperfect aspect of 
the truth. The error may lie in our Theology, or it may lie in 
what we are pleased to call our Science. It may be that some 
dogma, derived by tradition from our fathers, is having its hol- 
lowness betrayed by that light which sometimes shines upon 
the ways of God out of a better knowledge of His works. It 
may be that some proud and rash generalization of the schools 
is having its falsehood proved by the violence it does to the 
deepest instincts of our spiritual nature. — Duke of Argyle. 



FRANCIS W. NEWMAN. 

[Professor in University College, London.] 

Sayings and Foretellings. 

Virtue is man's highest good, 
Justice the chief virtue between man and man, 
Truth makes sure the instincts of virtue ; 
Free thought is needed for the search of Truth. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



20I 



Man has a mind for virtue and truth, 

As truly as limbs for useful labor, 

And labor and virtue are close akin. 

Labor of head or labor of hand 

Are needful to health of mind and body. 

Either labor is noble and right ; 

No rightful labor ought to be debasing. 

"Women are weakest and most need defense, 

Yet in Christian cities they are trampled under foot, 

Through the league between Mammon and a spurious policy. 

When woman is duly honored and homes are purified, 
And fiery drink is withheld from the weak in mind, 
And the traffickers in Sin are pursued as felons, 
And Truth is open-mouthed, and Thought is free — 
God will soon bless the land with blessings undreamed of. 



Woman's Duty, and the World's Need. 

Yet I speak not for women only, but also for men ; that is, 
for our common country. All who have read history, even 
superficially, are aware that it is usual to moralize over the fall 
of great States after they become rich and powerful, and to 
impute it to luxury. Luxury is not the correct word. Histo- 
rians ought to say impurity ; fostered by wealth, by venal Art, 
by vicious trade and vicious philosophy. The very profligates 
of old Rome saw and avowed how much these causes con- 
duced to fatal degeneracy. Paris is discovering that despotism 
and immorality are firm allies, and that the State-patronage of 
Vice is fatal to freedom. For myself, I have learned in a few 
months, more than in fifty years before, how deep are the cor- 
ruptions of England, and how vehement her downward career. 
With minds preoccupied by materialism and fatalism, our pub- 
licists and officials are quietly accepting our abominable state 
as the natural order of things, which ought to be organized 
and made comfortable by Law and Art ; thus smoothing our 
i3 



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path downwards into a hell of sensuality. The public men 
who will arrest this seem to be a small minority, and hitherto 
feeble : their adversaries have a permanent hold of official 
posts, where they are practically irresponsible and most diffi- 
cult to dislodge. I see not how anything can purify English 
society, and destroy the legal incentives and facilities of mani- 
fold corruption, quickly enough and decisively enough to save 
our future, without a greater intensity in the political influence 
of women. 

Because this is a crisis, at which our nation is called to 
choose between moral life and death, I am bold to address 
women themselves, and especially educated ladies. If you, 
ladies, are happy, remember that others are unhappy. If you 
have kind and just husbands, remember that thousands of 
women have selfish or wicked husbands. If you have enough 
of this world's goods, remember that scores of thousands of 
women and girls can scarcely get bread and shelter even by an 
excess of toil. If you have been tenderly watched over from 
childhood, learn that thousands of your sisters are untaught 
and untrained, and many hundreds wickedly sold by parents 
or kinsfolk to the shambles of the voluptuous rich. It is a 
grievous fact, that men possessed of political power, and fully 
aware of things concerning which we fear to speak very plainly, 
have enacted in a course of many centuries just enough law 
against these horrors to salve their own consciences, but never 
have so enforced any enactment as to make the law a reality ; 
much less have they enacted all that the case demands. I 
boldly say, that History and the voice of God sounding through 
its miserable pages, call upon pure hearted and happier Women 
to succor their unhappy sisters, whom the ruder and less virtu- 
ous sex tramples down, You cannot succor them without some 
power to mould the law and incite its enforcement. To claim 
a purely domestic status, disables you for contest against odious 
enormities, pregnant with fraud, cruelty and social decay. Such 
modesty is not womanly sensitiveness ; it is rather to be called 
womanish selfishness. I implore you, ladies, in the cause of 



BIBLE OF The ages. 



203 



the wretched and injured, and to quell that licentiousness 
which is the ruin of great nations, — arise and claim your right- 
ful position in the State ! 

Justice. 

Between man and man, or between man and brute, Justice 
is Righteousness. 

So between nations, or orders of men, Justice is the law of 
duty. 

Justice is the cement of mankind. A Nation or Empire 
which neglects to be internally just, falls asunder by discord or 
decay. 

To be first just and then loving, is to advance towards full- 
ness of virtue. 

To refuse Justice and bestow Love, is an affectation of 
Mercy and a reality of Insult. 

Without Chastity in man, there is no Justice to woman. 

Peace, without Justice, is not peace, but a truce of war. 

Policy which shuts its eyes to Justice is pernicious folly. 

Without entire Virtue there is no entireness of Justice ; for 
all Vice disables soul or body for some active service. 

Sacred Books. 

Books pre-eminently honored by the voluntary selection of 
piety, are reasonably held to be sacred, in a high and peculiar 
sense ; and such books may fulfil a high function in moral 
history, as have the sacred books of India, Persia, Judea and 
Christendom. 

Their benefit nevertheless has been grievously lessened by 
the strong tendency of mankind to idolize and lift into ideal 
perfection whatever has engaged their sacred feelings. 

Hebrew and Christian books for which the writers advanced 
no high pretensions have thus been gratuitously and hurtfully 
exalted into a miraculous greatness. Even the Confessions of 



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Faith put forth by Protestant Reformers have been in most 
countries pushed into unnatural and absurd eminence. 

Such events generally impose upon others the disagreeable 
duty of appearing as depredators of books once valuable. 

Hymn Books have been, to the Protestant Churches, the 
chief representative of new sacred writings. No Bibliolatry 
has been paid to them, and none have more effectually pro- 
moted spiritual life. 

All Sacred Books, however valuable, must be pervaded by 
the errors of their age, and become unfit for practical use to 
generations which have unlearned those errors. 

Education. 

Education consists in training the Faculties to full self-pos- 
session, the Habits to industry and refinement, the Sentiment 
to rightfulness and warmth. 

We may passively receive a stock of knowledge, without 
having the faculties active and well subordinated. 

Men ought not to be called educated when they have 
merely learned to obey; but much rather, when they have 
attained Self-guidance. 

To use power aright is a great test of sound education. 
The uneducated either uses it badly, or, as if terrified by its 
possession, drops it from his grasp. 

Leisure is a great power, and to use it aright is also a mark 
of the educated. 

Without some leisure, none but a narrow and accidental 
cultivation of the mind is possible. 

The millions of England have one-seventh part of time as 
leisure ; but they do not employ this for any real or valuable 
education, chiefly because they are not educated enough to 
estimate the advantage ; partly also, because those who ought 
to assist it impede it. 

Where trades are apt to be ruined and superseded from 
public causes beyond the control of the laborer, public justice, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



205 



as well as expediency, demands that the State busy itself to 
secure versatile powers of industry in the working classes. 

The primary education of the multitude has two principal 
roots, Industrial Art and Poetical Recitation. Industrial Art 
furnishes the laborer with the power of physical support, and 
in its higher forms rises into Science. Poetic Recitation teaches 
moral sentiment, musical rhythm, refinement, imaginative 
beauty, pride in nationality, patriotism. It culminates into 
religion. 

In the present condition of trade and complex constitu- 
tions, some instruction in politics and political economy is 
necessary. Religious institutions might be and ought to be the 
most efficient educators of the Sentiments °, but unhappily, a 
great change must pass over existing churches, before they can 
regain the lead which they have lost. 

Sectarianism hinders all national religion and sound national 
education. 

Theism is the only cure. When it has once fair play, it 
will educate nations and unite the world in harmony as yet 
unimagined. 

Aspiring Virtue — The Hero-Saint. 

Those who abound in leisure, with wealth or knowledge, 

Are open to new virtue, and to much new vice. 

How to bestow free time, is a problem for each to answer, 

According to his means, and capacity and bent ; 

And therein Selfishness has wide room to lead astray. 

Those who have grown strong, are bound to higher tasks, 

And, when the Good has become easy, to pursue the Better, 

And to find what is their task, and perform it manfully. 

High duties require labor, or at least permit not ease ; 

* # # * * 

The purer a man's conscience the higher is his thought of Duty. 

Duty is a taskmaster who prescribes endless work, 

And the higher virtue rises, the more she aspires. 

# * * # * * * 



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Who shall speak fitly of that virtue, sublime though imperfect, 
The virtue of the hero-saint, hidden, yet visible to the open eye, 
For the good of others resolute and surrendering its all, 
Large-hearted to imagine, vigilant to act, unwearied to perse- 
vere? 

It is sorrowful, yet always rejoices; humble yet very confiding; 
Aware of human ignorance, yet bold to track divine mysteries. 
It exists not, save in the deep of soul and patient of thought. 
It thrives with man's whole nature — intellect, fancy, con- 
science, — - 

And dwindles with the cramping of genius or narrowing of 
knowledge. 

Therefore its diffusion is for future ages or future worlds, 

When mutual love and prudence shall better conspire, 

And the lack of one shall be supplied by the riches of many. 

On the Study of Physics 

I do not think that it is the mission of this age, or of any 
other particular age, to lay down a system of education which 
shall hold good for all ages. The basis of human nature is, 
perhaps, permanent, but not so the forms under which the 
spirit of humanity manifests itself. . It is sometimes peaceful, 
sometimes warlike, sometimes religious, sometimes skeptical, 
aud history is simply the record of its mutations. 

" The eternal Pan 

Who layeth the world's incessant plan 
Halteth never in one shape, 
But forever doth escape 
Into new forms. " 

This appears to be the law of things throughout the uni- 
verse, and it is therefore no proof of fickleness or destructive- 
ness, properly so called, if the implements of human culture 
change with the times, and the requirements of the present 
age be found different from those of the preceding. Unless 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



207 



you are prepared to say that the past world, or some portion 
of it, has been the final expression of human competency; that 
the wisdom of man has already reached its climax ; that the 
intellect of to-day possesses feebler powers, or a narrower scope, 
than the intellect of earlier times — you cannot, with reason, 
demand an unconditional acceptance of the systems of the 
past, nor are you justified in divorcing me from the world and 
times in which I live, and conforming my conversation to the 
times gone by. Who can blame me if I cherish the belief that 
the world is still young; that there are great possibilities in store 
for it ; that the Englishman of* to-day is made of as good stuff, 
and has as high and independent a vocation to fulfill, as had 
the ancient Greek or Roman. 

While thankfully accepting what antiquity has to offer, let 
us never forget that the present century has just as good aright 
to its forms of thought and methods of culture as any former 
centuries had to theirs, and that the same sources of power are 
open to us to-day as were ever open to humanity in any age of 
the world. 

In the earliest religious writings we find man described as 
a mixture of the earthly and the divine. The existence of the 
latter implies, in his case, that of the former ; and hence the 
holiest and most self-denying saint must, to a certain extent, 
protect himself against hunger and cold. But every attempt 
to restrict man to the dominion of the senses has failed and 
will continue to fail. He is the repository of forces which 
push him beyond the world of sense. He has intellect as well 
as a palate, and the demands of the latter being satisfied, the 
former inevitably puts in its claim. We cannot quench these 
desires of the intellect. They are stimulated by the phenomena 
which surrounds us, as the body is by oxygen ; and in the 
presence of these phenomena we thirst for knowledge as an 
Arab longs for water when he smells the Nile. The Chaldean 
shepherds could not rest content with their bread and milk, but 
found that they had other wants to satisfy. The stars shed 
their light upon the shepherd and his flock, but in both cases 



2o8 



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with different results. The quadruped cropped the green 
herbage and slept contented ; but that power which had already- 
made man the lord of the quadruped was appealed to night 
after night, and thus the intellectual germ which lay in the 
nature of these Chaldeans was stimulated and developed. 
Surely, it might be urged, if man be not made, and stars scat- 
tered by guess-work, there is strong reason for assuming that it 
was intended that mental power should be developed in this 
way. But if this be granted, it must be admitted that we have 
the very highest sanction for the prosecution of physical 
research. Sanction, indeed, is a term too weak to express the 
inference suggested by a comparison of man's powers with his 
position upon earth ; it points to an imperative command to 
search and to examine, rather than to a mere toleration of 
physical inquiry. — John TyndalL 



Experience of the Poet Tasso. 

Whether grave or gay, this spirit often came to him, and he 
often held long discourses with it. Manso endeavored to per- 
suade him that it was a fancy ; but Tasso maintained that it 
was as real as themselves, a Christian spirit, and which Manso 
admits gave him great comfort and consolation. Tasso, to 
convince Manso of the reality of this spirit, begged him to be 
present at an interview. Manso says that he saw Tasso address 
himself to some invisible object, listen in return, and then 
reply to what it appeared to have said. He says that the dis- 
courses of Tasso "were so lofty and marvelous, both by the 
sublimity of their topics and a certain unwonted manner of 
talking, that, exalted above myself into a certain kind of ecstacy, 
I did not dare to interrupt them." Tasso was disappointed, 
however, that Manso did not see or hear the spirit — which he 
ought not to have been after what he himself tells us, that to 
see spirits the human eye must be purified, or the spirits must 
array themselves in matter. This is the present acknowledged 
law in such cases of apparitions. They who see them must be 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 209 

mediums — that is, have their spiritual eyes open — or the spirits 
must envelop themselves in matter obvious to the outer eye. 
Tasso did not recollect that Manso might not be in the clair- 
voyant condition in which he himself was ; and Manso, wholly 
ignorant of these psychological laws, could only suppose Tasso 
dealing with a subjective idea. Yet Manso evidently/^// the 
presence of the spirit, for he was raised by it " into a kind of 
ecstacy," and he confesses that Tasso's spiritual interviews 
were more likely to affect his own mind than that he should 
dissipate Tasso's true or imaginary opinion. — William Howitt. 

The Science of Religion. 

The difficulties which trouble us, have troubled the hearts 
and minds of men as far back as we can trace the beginnings 
of the religious life. The great problems touching the relation 
of the Finite to the Infinite, of the human mind as the recip- 
ient, and the Divine Spirit as the source of truth, are old 
problems indeed; and while watching their appearance in 
different countries, and their treatment under varying circum- 
stances, we shall be able, I believe, to profit ourselves, both by 
the errors which others have committed before us, and by the 
truth which they have discovered. We shall know the rocks 
that threaten every religion in this changing and shifting world 
of ours, and having watched many a storm of religious contro- 
versy, and many a shipwreck in distant seas, we shall face with 
greater calmness and prudence the troubled waters at home. 

Whenever we can trace back a religion to its first begin- 
nings, we find it free from many of the blemishes that offend 
us in its later phases. The founders of the ancient religions 
of the world, as far as we can judge, were minds of high stamp, 
full of noble aspirations, yearning for truth, devoted to the 
welfare of their neighbors, examples of purity and unselfish- 
ness. What they desired to found upon earth was but seldom 
realized, and their sayings, if preserved in their original form, 
offer often a strange contrast to the practice of those who pro- 



2IO 



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fess to be their disciples. * * * * Even those who lived 
with Buddha misunderstood his words ; and at the Great 
Council which had to settle the Buddhist canon, Asoka, the 
Indian Constantine, had to remind the assembled priests that 
"what had been said by Buddha, that alone was well said;" 
and that certain works ascribed to Buddha, as for instance, 
the instruction given to his son Rahula, were apochryphal, if 
not heretical. * * * * 

To those, no doubt, who value the tenets of their religion 
as the miser values his pearls and precious stones, thinking 
their value lessened if pearls and stones of the same kind are 
found in other parts of the world, the Science of Religion will 
bring many a rude shock; but to the true believer, truth, 
wherever it appears, is welcome, nor will any doctrine seem the 
less true or the less precious, because it was seen, not only by 
Moses or Christ, but likewise by Buddha or Lao-tse. Nor 
should it be forgotten, that while a comparison of ancient 
religions will certainly show that some of the most vital articles 
of faith are the common property of the whole of mankind, — at 
least of all who seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after 
Him, — and find Him, the same comparison alone can possibly 
teach us what is peculiar to Christianity, and what has secured 
to it that pre-eminent position which now it holds in spite of 
all obloquy. The gain will be greater than the loss, if loss 
there be, which I, at least, shall never admit. — Max Midler. 



The Functions of Unbelief. 

To skepticism we owe that spirit of inquiry which during 
the last two centuries has gradually encroached on every pos- 
sible subject ; has reformed every department of practical and 
speculative knowledge, has weakened the authority of the 
privileged classes, and thus placed liberty on a surer founda- 
tion; has restrained the arrogance of the nobles, has chastised 
the despotism of princes, and has even diminished the preju- 
dices of the clergy. * * * 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



211 



No single fact has so extensively affected the different 
nations as the duration, the amount, and above all the diffusion 
of their skepticism. In Spain, the church, aided by the Inqui- 
sition, has always been strong enough to punish skeptical 
writers, and prevent, not indeed the existence, but the promulga- 
tion of skeptical opinions. But in England and France, which 
are the countries where skepticism first openly appeared and 
where it has been most diffused, the results are altogether 
different, and the love of inquiry being encouraged, there has 
arisen that constantly progressive knowledge to which these 
two great nations owe their prosperity. — Buckle. 

Human Interest in History. — Its Moral Elements. 

One lesson, and only one, history may be said to repeat 
with distinctness : that the world is built somehow on moral 
foundations ; that in the long run, it is well with the good ; in 
the long run, it is ill with the wicked. But this is no science ; 
it is no more than the old doctrine taught long ago by the 
Hebrew prophets. The theories of M. Comte and his disciples 
advance us, after all, not a step beyond the trodden and 
familiar ground. If men are not entirely animals, they are at 
least half animals, and are subject in this aspect of them to 
the conditions of animals. So far as those parts of man's 
doings are concerned, which neither have, nor need have any- 
thing moral about them, so far the laws of him are calculable. 
There are laws for his digestiou, and laws of the means by 
which his digestive organs are supplied with matter. But pass 
beyond them, and where are we ? In a world where it would 
be as easy to calculate men's actions by laws like those of posi- 
tive philosophy, as to measure the orbit of Neptune with a foot- 
rule, or weigh Sirius in a grocer's scale. 

And it is not difficult to see why this should be. The first 
principle on which the theory of a science of history can be 
plausibly argued, is that all actions whatsoever arise from self- 
interest. It may be enlightened self-interest, it may be unen- 



212 CHAPTERS FROM THE 

lightened ; but it is assumed as an axiom, that every man, in 
whatever he does, is aiming at something which he considers 
will promote his happiness. His conduct is not determined 
by his will; it is determined by the object of his desires. 
Adam Smith, in laying the foundations of political economy, 
expressly eliminates every other motive. He does not say 
that men never act on other motives. He asserts merely that, 
as far as the arts of production are concerned, and of buying 
and selling, the action of self-interest may be counted upon as 
uniform. What Adam Smith says of political economy, Mr. 
Buckle would extend over the whole circle of human activity. 

Now, that which especially distinguishes a high order of 
man from a low order of man — that which constitutes human 
goodness, human greatness, human nobleness — is surely not the 
degree of enlightenment with which men pursue their own 
advantage ; but it is self-forgetfulness ; it is self-sacrifice ; it is 
the disregard of personal indulgence, personal advantages 
remote or present, because some other line of conduct is more 
right. 

We are sometimes told that this is but another way of 
expressing the same thing; that when a man prefers doing 
what is right, it is only because to do right gives him a higher 
satisfaction. It appears to me on the contrary to be a differ- 
ence in the very heart and nature of things. The martyr goes 
to the stake, the patriot to the scaffold, not with a view to any 
future reward to themselves, but because it is a glory to fling 
away their lives to truth and freedom. 

And so through all phases of existence, to the smallest 
details of common life, the beautiful character is the unselfish 
character. Those whom we most love and admire, are those 
to whom the thought of self seems never to occur : who do 
simply and with no ulterior aim — with no thought whether it 
will be pleasant to themselves or unpleasant — that which is 
good and right and generous. 

Is this still selfishness, only more enlightened ? I do not 
think so. The essence of true nobility is neglect of self. Let 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



213 



the thought of self pass in, and the beauty of a great action is 
gone, like the bloom from a soiled flower. Surely it is a para- 
dox to speak of the self-interest of a martyr who dies for a 
cause, the triumph of which he will never enjoy; and the 
greatest of that great company in all ages would have done 
what they did, had their personal prospects closed with the 
grave. Nay, there have been those so zealous for some glorious 
principle as to wish themselves blotted out of the book of 
Heaven if the cause of Heaven could succeed. 

And out of this mysterious quality, whatever it be, arise the 
higher relations of human life, the higher modes of human 
obligation. Kant, the philosopher, used to say that there were 
two things which overwhelmed him with awe as he thought of 
them : One was the star-sown deep of space, without limit 
and without end ; the other was, right and wrong. Right, the 
sacrifice of self to good ; wrong, the sacrifice of good to self — ■ 
not graduated objects of desire, to which we are determined 
by the degrees of our knowledge, but wide asunder as pole 
and pole, as light and darkness ; one the object of infinite 
love ; the other, the object of infinite detestation and scorn. 
It is in this marvelous power in men to do wrong (it is an old 
story, but none the less true for that) — it is in this power to do 
wrong — wrong or right, as it lies somehow with ourselves to 
choose — that the impossibility stands of forming scientific calcu- 
lations of what men will do before the fact, or scientific 
explanations of what they have done after the fact. 

If men were consistently selfish, you might analyze their 
motives; if they were consistently noble they would express in 
their conduct the laws of the highest perfection. But so long 
as two natures are mixed together, and the strange creature 
which results from the combination is now under one influence 
and now under another, so long you will make nothing of him 
except from the old-fashioned moral — or, if you please, imagi- 
native — point of view. 

Even the laws of political economy itself cease to guide us 
when they touch moral government. So long as labor is a 



214 



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chattel to be bought and sold, so long, like other commodities, 
it follows the condition of supply and demand. But if for his 
misfortune, an employer considers that he stands in human 
relations towards his workmen; if he believes, rightly or 
wrongly, that he is responsible for them; that in return for their 
labor he is bound to see that their children are decently taught, 
and they and their families decently fed, and clothed, and 
lodged ; that he ought to care for them in sickness and in old 
age — then political economy will no longer direct him, and the 
relations between himself and his dependants will have to be 
arranged on quite other principles. 

So long as he considers only his own material profit, so long 
supply and demand will settle every difficulty, but the introduc- 
tion of a new factor spoils the equation. 

And it is precisely in this debatable ground of low motives 
and noble emotions ; in the struggle, ever-failing yet ever 
renewed, to carry truth and justice into the administration of 
human society ; in the establishment of States and in the over- 
throw of tyrannies ; in the rise and fall of creeds ; in the world 
of ideas ; in the character and deeds of the great actors in the 
drama of life, where good and evil fight out their everlasting 
battle, now ranged in opposite camps, now and more often in 
the heart, both of them, of each living man — that the true 
human interest of history resides. 

The progress of industries, the growth of material and 
mechanical civilization, are interesting ; but they are not the 
most interesting. ****** 

What then are the lessons of history ? It is a voice sound- 
ing forever across the centuries, the laws of right and wrong. 
Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the 
moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. For every false 
word or unrighteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust 
or vanity, the price has to be paid at last ; not always by the 
chief offender, but by some one. Justice and truth alone 
endure and live. Injustice and falsehood may be long-lived, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



215 



but dooms-day comes at last to them, in French Revolutions 
and other terrible ways. — James A. Fronde. 

The Church of the Future. 

What did these true Knights of the Cross — these brave 
Barons of the Reformation — win back for themselves and for 
their descendants ? God's free gift of liberty! The right of 
all men to read and judge the Scriptures for themselves. But 
Protestantism had no sooner won back this right of private 
judgment, than it proved false to the principles to which it had 
been indebted for its own existence. It at once proceeded to 
draw up creeds, and to frame articles, and to put forth its own 
peculiar "Scheme of Salvation," to hedge itself about with 
ecclesiastical and civil Law, and to erect an infallible Popedom 
of its own. * * * 

The laws of God are stronger than the laws of men. The 
church that shall endure the wear and tear of Time, must not 
be reared on Dogmas which men out-grow; but on the laws of 
man's spiritual nature — which are laws of God. All Falsehood 
will ultimately die out. There is no moral darkness but what 
God's light will penetrate some time. It is not Truth and Right 
that are everywhere hedged about by the " pains and penalties " 
of Law. Truth and Right need no such guardians : they can 
guard themselves. Whatever is Right is reasonable, and what- 
ever is Reasonable is Right. No Institution, no Church, that 
intends to the divine work of a church, namely, to spiritualize, 
and instruct, and elevate the moral and intellectual condition 
of all the People — must hope to stand, if its basis be not strictly 
Rational — for then its basis will be Right ; or if its principles 
be not expansive — for then it can and will adapt itself to the 
growing wants, and to the moral and intellectual development 
of the nations in which it is located. 

There are tens of thousands of educated, thoughtful men, 
who, because they cannot countenance the irrational things 
which are said and done everywhere around them in the name 



2l6 



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of Religion, look deridingly on; and stand aloof from all 
denominations. In addition to these there is that still larger 
class, the laboring men and their families, to whom Religion 
would not only carry Spiritual consolation, but would tend to 
raise and redeem them, as a class, from the degradation and 
social thraldom which it has come to be the opinion among us 
that they suffer agreeably to an ordinance of God. I do not 
believe this ; I hope I never shall believe it. If Christianity 
has a mission on earth, it is to raise and bless the Poor. This 
is God-like labor, and worthy of the followers of Christ. 

A Church by moral suasion, but by no other means, ought 
to repress that growing, ever-thriving Sensuality— the natural 
offspring of Selfishness, which is the basis and root of all degra- 
dation, and poverty, and squalid wretchedness, and all the 
wrong and moral evil which environ us on every side ; and to 
cultivate and cherish that Love — the natural offspring of Edu- 
cation and Spiritual development, which would in the process 
of time exterminate these giant evils, and establish righteous- 
ness and the kingdom of God. 

A Church true to these principles, is the true Parliament ; 
the true Magistrate ; the true Policeman ; the true guide in all 
things ; the truest friend of Humanity ; the only representa- 
tive on earth of God. What the Church of England should 
have been, the Church of the Future — if it prove worthy of 
the name of a Church — must be / 

It is clear that such a Church must have an all-beneficent 
God as the object of its adoration; a belief in immortality for 
its hope ; and for its earthly basis, that Reason which com- 
mends itself to every man's conscience, and is holy " in the 
sight of God. " For Doctrines, such a church will take its stand 
on the divine principles enunciated in Christ's Sermon on the 
Mount. It must seek to be the "light of the world" by address- 
ing itself to the universal feelings, and wants, and yearnings, 
and inner nature of all humanity. It must be a "city set on a 
hill that cannot be hid. " It is not to " destroy the Law or the 
Prophets," but to "fulfil" the one, and bring about the sublime 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



217 



predictions of the other. It is not to preach " an eye for an 
eye, and a tooth for a tooth ; " but must preach the work of 
Righteousness, and obtain all its conquests over evil and wrong, 
by Love. It is not to "love its brethren only," but to love all 
men and labor unceasingly to do them good. It must not be 
a pious-looking sham, but a truly pious reality. 

It must eschew the sandy foundation of Fable, and Fancy, 
and ever-shifting Opinion, and build its Temple on the Rock 
of uncontradictable Truth; that when the rains of Error 
descend, and the floods of Imposture come, and the whirlwinds 
of Falsehood beat upon it, it might stand — firmly as the Rock 
which bears it. Its Religion must be Love to God, and Love 
to all humanity. It must be the Church of those who have 
no Church : it must be the friend of the friendless ; the support 
of the weak; — it must aim to be the Church of the People. 
Justice must be its watchword; and the inscription on its 
banner — Love. * * * * 

My dear Friends, to me it seems that the Church of the 
Future — spring up where it will, or however named — should 
collect the Pariahs of Society into its bosom as its first care. 

I have already intimated that it should, in my opinion, pro- 
claim a Religion which has long gone out of fashion — a Religion 
which has Reason for its basis ; brotherly love, and equal jus_ 
tice in all things — on earth as in heaven — for its temporal aim 5 
"the stone which the builders rejected" for the chief one of its 
Temple ; a God of perfect Justice and Goodness and Truth, 
for its daily and hourly worship ; that it must be a Church of 
refuge for the Infidel — a cosmopolitan communion — an Edu- 
cated working Church, for an Educated working world — in 
which there is honor for its elders, — a rational discipline for the 
young — a means of Salvation (without let or hindrance) for all. 
I would have a Church, then, which should deserve to be 
National, — a Religion which none but the utterly selfish, and 
those who profess to pride themselves upon being irrational^ 
could discountenance or reject — a church for all, but, in the 
first instance, more especially for the Poor who have no 
14 



2l8 



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church, and thousands upon thousands of them no education, 
no God! — Edward JV. Denny 's, London. 

God's Voice Nearer Than the Book. 

It is perhaps God's will that we should be taught, in this 
our day, among other precious lessons, not to build up our faith 
upon a book, though it be the Bible itself ; but to realize more 
fully the blessedness of knowing that He himself, the living 
God, our Father and Friend, is nearer and closer to us than 
any book can be ; that his voice within the heart may be heard 
continually by the obedient child that listens for it ; and that 
that should be our Teacher and Guide in the path of duty, which 
is the path of life, when all other helpers — even the words of 
the best of books — may fail us. — J?. IV. Colenso. 

Toleration, and Study of the Bible. 

At the Reformation it might have seemed at first as if the 
study of theology were about to return. But in reality an 
entirely new lesson commenced; the lesson of toleration, the 
very opposite of dogmatism. It implies in reality a con- 
fession that there are insoluble problems upon which even 
Revelation throws but little light. Its tendency is to mod- 
ify the early dogmatism, by substituting the spirit for the 
letter, and practical religion for precise definitions of truth. 
This lesson is certainly not yet fully learnt. Our tolera- 
tion is at present too often timid, too often rash, sometimes 
sacrificing valuable religious elements, sometimes fearing its 
own plainest conclusions. Yet there can be no question 
that it is gaining on the minds of all educated men, whether 
Protestant or Roman Catholic, and is passing from them to be 
the common property of educated and uneducated alike. 
There are occasions when the spiritual anarchy which has 
necessarily followed the Reformation, threatens for a moment 
to bring back some temporary bondage, like the Roman Cath- 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



219 



olic system. But on the whole the steady progress 01 tolera- 
tion is unmistakable. The mature mind of our race is begin- 
ning to modify and Soften the hardness and severity of the 
principles which its early manhood had elevated into immut- 
able statements of truth. 

Men are beginning to take a wider view than they did. 
Physical science, researches into history, a more thorough 
knowledge of the world they inhabit, have enlarged our phi- 
losophy beyond the limits which bounded that of the Church 
of our Fathers. And all these have an influence, whether we 
will or no, on our determinations of religious truth. There are 
found to be more things in heaven and earth than were 
dreamt of in the patristic theology. God's creation is a 
new book, to be read by the side of His revelation, and to be 
interpreted as coming from Him. We can acknowledge the 
great value of the forms in which the first ages of the Church 
defined the truth, and yet refuse to be bound by them ; we 
can use them, and yet endeavor to go beyond them, just as 
they also went beyond the legacy which was left us by the 
Apostles. * * * * 

The strongest argument in favor of tolerating all opinions, 
is that our conviction of the truth of an opinion is worthless 
unless it has established itself in spite of the most strenuous 
resistance, and is still prepared to overcome the same resist- 
ance if necessary. Toleration itself is no exception to the 
universal law : and those who must regret the slow progress by 
which it wins its way, may remember that this slowness makes 
the final victory the more certain and complete. Nor is that 
all. The toleration thus obtained is different in kind from 
what it otherwise would have been. It is not only stronger, it 
is richer and fuller. For the slowness of its progress gives time 
to disentangle from dogmatism the really valuable principles 
and sentiments which have been mixed up and contained in it, 
and to unite toleration, not with indifference and worldliness, 
but with spiritual truth and religiousness of life. 

Even the perverted use of the Bible has therefore not been 



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without certain great advantages. And meanwhile how utterly 
impossible it would be in the manhood of the world to imagine 
any other instructor to mankind. And for that reason, every 
day makes it more and more evident that the thorough study 
of the Bible, the investigation of what it teaches and what it 
does not teach, the determination of the limits of what we 
mean by its inspiration, the determination of the degree of 
authority to be ascribed to the different books, if any degrees 
are to be admitted, must take the lead of all other studies. He 
is guilty of high treason against the faith who fears the result 
of any investigation, whether philosophical, or scientific, or 
historical. And therefore nothing should be more welcome 
than the extension of knowledge of any and every kind — for 
every increase in our accumulation of knowledge throws fresh 
light upon these, the real problems of our day. If geology 
proves to us that we must not interpret the first chapters of Gen- 
esis literally, if historical investigation shall show us that inspi- 
ration, however it may protect the doctrine, yet was not 
empowered to protect the narrative of the inspired writers from 
occasional inaccuracy ; if careful criticism shall prove that there 
have been occasional interpolations and forgeries in that Book, 
as in many others, the results should still be welcome. Even 
the mistakes of careful and reverent students are more valuable 
now than truth held in unthinking acquiescence. The substance 
of the teaching which we derive from the Bible will not really 
be affected by anything of this sort. While its hold upon the 
mind of believers, and its power to stir the depths of the spirit 
of man, however much weakened at first, must be immeasurably 
strengthened in the end, by clearing away any blunders which 
may have been fastened on it by human interpretation. — Fred- 
erick Temple, JD. D. ; Chaplain in ordinary to Queen Victoria — 
Head Master of Rugby School, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



221 



CHAPTER XIII. 



THE SYMPATHY OF RELIGIONS. 



BY T. W. HIGGINSON. 



Newport, R. I. 

Our true religious life begins when we discover that there 
is an Inner Light, not infallible but invaluable, which "lighteth 
every man that cometh into the world. " Then we have some- 
thing to steer by; and it is chiefly this, and not an anchor, that 
we need. The human soul, like any other noble vessel, was not 
built to be anchored, but to sail An anchorage may, indeed, 
be at times a temporary need, in order to make some special 
repairs, or to take fresh cargo in ; yet the natural destiny of 
both ship and soul is not the harbor, but the ocean ; to cut 
with even keel the vast and beautiful expanse ; to pass from 
island to island of more than Indian balm, or to continents 
fairer than Columbus won ; or, best of all, steering close to the 
wind, to extract motive power from the greatest obstacles. Men 
must forget the eternity through which they have yet to sail, 
when they talk of anchoring here upon this bank and shoal of 
time. It would be a tragedy to see the shipping of the world 
whitening the seas no more, and idly riding at anchor in Atlantic 
ports ; but it would be more tragic to see a world of souls fasci- 
nated into a fatal repose and renouncing their destiny of motion. 

And as with individuals, so with communities. The great 
historic religions of the world are not so many stranded hulks 
left to perish. The best of them are all in motion. All over 
the world the divine influence moves men. There is a sym- 
pathy in religions, and this sympathy is shown alike in their 
origin, their records, and their progress. Men are ceasing to 
disbelieve, and learning to believe more. * * * 



222 CHAPTERS FROM THE 

Every year brings new knowledge of the religions of the 
world, and every step in knowledge brings out the sympathy 
between them. They all show the same aim, the same symbols, 
the same forms, the same weaknesses, the same aspirations. 
Looking at these points of unity, we might say there is but one 
religion under many forms, whose essential creed is the Father- 
hood of God, and the Brotherhood of Man, — disguised by cor - 
ruptions, symbolized by mythologies, ennobled by virtues, 
degraded by vices, but still the same. Or if, passing to a closer 
analysis, we observe the shades of difference, we shall find in 
these varying faiths the several instruments which perform what 
Cudworth calls " the Symphony of Religions. " And though 
some may stir like drums, and others soothe like flutes, and 
others like violins command the whole range of softness and of 
strength, yet they are all alike instruments, and nothing in any 
one of them is so wondrous as the great laws of sound which 
equally control them all. 

" Amid so much war and contest and variety of opinion," 
said Maximus Tyrius, "you will find one consenting convic- 
tion in every land, that there is one God, the King and Father 
of all. " " God being one," said Aristotle, " only receives vari- 
ous names from the* various manifestations we perceive." 
"Sovereign God," said Cleanthes, in that sublime prayer which 
Paul quoted, " whom men invoke under many names, and who 
rulest alone, it is to thee that all nations should address them- 
selves, for we all are thy children. " So Origen, the Christian 
Father, frankly says that no man can be blamed for calling 
God's name in Egyptian, nor in Scythian, nor in such other 
language as he best knows. 

To say that different races worship different Gods, is like 
saying that they are warmed by different suns. The names 
differ, but the sun is the same, and so is God. As there is but 
one source of light and warmth, so there is but one source of 
religion. To this all nations testify alike. We have yet but a 
part of our Holy Bible. The time will come when, as in the 
middle ages, all pious books will be called sacred scriptures, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



Scriptures Sacree. From the most remote portions of the earth, 
from the Vedas and the Sagas, from Plato and Zoroaster, Con- 
fucius and Mohammed, from the Emperor Marcus Antoninus 
and the slave Epictetus, from the learned Alexandrians and the 
ignorant Galla negroes, there will be gathered hymns and 
prayers and maxims in which every religious soul may unite, — 
the magnificent liturgy of the human race. 

The greatest of modern scholars, Von Humboldt, asserted 
in middle life and repeated the assertion in old age, that "all 
positive religions contain three distinct parts. First, a code of 
morals, very fine, and nearly the same in all ; second, a geo- 
logical dream, and third, a myth or historical novellette, which 
last becomes the most important of all. " And though this 
observation may be somewhat roughly stated, its essential truth 
is seen when we compare the different religions of the world, 
side by side. With such startling points of similarity, where is 
the difference ? The main difference lies here, that each fills 
some blank space in its creed with the name of a different 
teacher. For instance, the Oriental Parsee wears a fine white 
garment, bound around him with a certain knot ; and whenever 
this knot is undone, at morning or night, he repeats the four 
main points of his creed, which are as follows : — ■ 

" To believe in one God, and hope for mercy from him 
only. 

"To believe in a future state of existence. 
"To do as you would be done by. 

Thus far the Parsee keeps on the universal ground of 
religion. Then he drops into the language of his sect and 
adds : — 

"To believe in Zoroaster as lawgiver, and to hold his 
writings sacred." 

The creed thus furnishes a formula for all religions. It 
might be printed iu blank like a circular, leaving only the closing 
name to be filled in. For Zoroaster read Christ, and you have 
Christianity; read Buddha, and you have Buddhism; read 
Mohammed, and you have Mohammedanism. Each of these, 



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in short, is Natural Religion plus an individual name. It is by 
insisting on that plus that each religion stops short of being 
universal. 

In this religion of the human race, thus variously disguised, 
we find everywhere the same leading features. The same great 
doctrines, good or bad, — regeneration, predestination, atone- 
ment, the future life, the final judgment, the Divine Reason or 
Logos, and the Trinity. The same religious institutions, — • 
monks, missionaries, priests, and pilgrims. The same ritual — ■ 
prayers, liturgies, sacrifices, sermons, hymns. The same imple- 
ments—frankincense, candles, holy water, relics, amulets, votive 
offerings. The same symbols, — the cross, the ball, the triangle, 
the serpent, the all-seeing eye, the halo of rays, the tree of life. 
The same saints, angels, and martyrs. The same holiness 
attached to particular cities, rivers, and mountains. The same 
prophecies and miracles, — the dead restored and evil spirits 
cast out. The self-same holy days ; for Easter and Christmas 
were kept as spring and autumn festivals, centuries before our 
era, by Egyptians, Persians, Saxons, Romans. The same 
artistic designs, since the mother and child stand depicted, not 
only in the temples of Europe, but in those of Etruria and 
Arabia, Egypt and Thibet. In ancient Christian art, the evan- 
gelists were represented with the same heads of eagles, oxen, 
and lions, upon which we gaze with amazement in Egyptian 
tombs. Nay, the very sects and subdivisions of all historic 
religions have been the same, and each supplies us with mystic 
and rationalist, formalist and philanthropist, ascetic and epicu- 
rean. The simple fact is, that all these things are as indige- 
nous as grass and mosses ; they spring up in every soil, and 
only the microscope can tell them apart. 

And, as all these inevitably recur, so comes back again and 
again the idea of incarnation, — the Divine Man. Here, too, 
all religions sympathize, and, with slight modifications, each is 
the copy of the other. As in the dim robing-rooms of foreign 
churches are kept rich stores of sacred vestments, ready to be 
thrown over every successive generation of priests, so the world 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



225 



has kept in memory the same stately traditions to decorate each 
new Messiah. He is predicted by prophecy, hailed by sages, 
born of a virgin, attended by miracle, borne to heaven without 
tasting death, and with promise of return. Zoroaster and Con- 
fucius have no human father. Osiris of Egypt is the Son of God ; 
he is called the Reveal er of Life and Light; he first teaches one 
chosen race • he then goes with his apostles to teach the Gen- 
tiles, conquering the world by peace; he is slain by evil 
powers ; after death he descends into hell, then rises again, and 
presides at the last judgment of all mankind : those who call 
upon his name shall be saved. Buddha is born of a virgin ; his 
name means the Word, the Logos, but he is known more ten- 
derly as the Saviour of Man ; he embarrasses his teachers, 
when a child, by his understanding and his answers ; he is 
tempted in the wilderness, when older; he goes with his 
apostles to redeem the world; he abolishes caste and cruelty, 
and teaches forgiveness ; he receives among his followers out- 
casts whom Pharisaic pride despises, and he only says, " My 
law is a law of mercy to all. " Slain by enemies, he descends 
into hell, rising without tasting death, and still lives to make 
intercession for man. 

These are the recognized properties of religious tradition ; 
the beautiful garments belong not to the individual, but the 
race. It is the drawback on all human greatness that it makes 
itself deified. Even of Jesus it was said sincerely by the Pla- 
tonic philosopher Porphyry ; " That noble soul who has 
ascended into heaven, has by a certain fatality become an 
occasion of error." The inequality of gifts is a problem not 
yet solved, and there is always a craving for some miracle to 
explain it. Men set up their sublime representatives as so 
many spiritual athletes, and measure them. "See, this one is 
six inches taller; those six inches prove him divine." But 
because men surpass us, surpass everybody, shall we hold them 
separate from the race ? Construct the race as you will, some- 
body must stand at the head, in virtue as in intellect. Shall 
we deify Shakespeare ? It paralyzes my intellect if I doubt 



226 



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whether Shakespeare was a man ; it paralyzes my whole spirit- 
ual nature if I doubt whether Jesus was. 

I believe that all religion is natural, all revealed. What 
faith in humanity springs up, what trust in God, when one 
recognizes the sympathy of religions ! Every race believes in 
a Creator and Governor of the world, in whom devout souls 
recognize a Father also. Every race believes in immortality. 
Every race recognizes in its religious precepts the brotherhood 
of man. The whole gigantic system of caste in Hindostan 
has grown up in defiance of the Vedas, which are now being 
invoked to abolish it. " He is my beloved of whom mankind 
are not afraid, and who of mankind is not afraid," says the 
Bhagvat Geeta. " Kesava is pleased with him who does good 
to others, who is always desirous of the welfare of all crea- 
tures, " says the Vishnu Purana. In Confucius it is written, 
" My doctrine is simple and easy to understand," and his chief 
disciple adds, "It consists only in having the heart right and in 
loving one's neighbor as one's self." When he was asked, "Is 
there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all 
one's life?" he answered, "Is not 'Reciprocity' such a word? 
what you wish done to yourself, do to others. y By some trans- 
lators the rule is given in a negative form, in which it is also 
found in the Jewish Talmud (Rabbi Hillel), " Do not to another 
what thou wouldst not he should do to thee ; this is the sum of 
the law. " So Thales, when asked for a rule of life, taught, 
" That which thou blamest in another, do not thyself. " " Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, " said the Hebrew book of 
Leviticus. Iamblichus tells us that Pythagoras taught "the 
love of all to all." "To live is not to live for one's self alone, 
let us help one another," said the Greek dramatist, Menander; 
and the Roman dramatist Terence, following him, brought 
down the applause of the whole theate: by the saying, " I am 
a man ; I count nothing human foreign to me. " " Give bread 
to a stranger," said Quintilian, "in the name of the universal 
brotherhood which binds together all men under the common 
father of nature. " " What good man will look on any suffering 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



227 



as foreign to himself?" said the Latin satirist Juvenal. " This 
sympathy is what distinguishes us from brutes, " he adds. The 
poet Lucan predicted a time when warlike weapons should be 
laid aside, and all men love one another. "Nature has inclined 
us to love men," said Cicero, "and this is the foundation of 
the law. " He also described his favorite virtue of justice as 
" devoting itself wholly to the good of others. " Seneca said, 
" We are members of one great body. Nature planted in us a 
mutual love, and fitted us for social life. We must consider 
that we were born for the good of the whole. " " Love man- 
kind/' wrote Marcus Antoninus, summing it all up in two 
words ; while the loving soul of Epictetus extended the sphere 
of mutual affection beyond this earth, holding that "The uni- 
verse is but one great city, full of beloved ones, divine and 
human, by nature endeared to each other. 

This sympathy of religions extends even to the loftiest vir- 
tues, — the forgiveness of injuries, the love of enemies, and 
the overcoming of evil with good. "The wise man," said 
the Chinese Lao-tse, "avenges his injuries with benefits." 
"Hatred," says a Buddhist sacred book, the Dhammapada, 
"does not cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by love; this 
is the eternal rule." " To overcome evil with good is good, and 
to resist evil by evil is evil," says a Mohammedan manual of 
ethics. " Turn not away from a sinner, but look on him with 
compassion, " says Saadi's Gulistan. " If thine enemy hunger, 
give him bread to eat ; if he thirst, give him water to drink, " 
said the Hebrew proverb. " He who commits injustice is ever 
made more wretched than he who suffers it," said Plato; and 
adds : "It is never right to return an injury." " No one will dare 
maintain," said Aristotle, "that it is better to do injustice than 
to bear it." "We should do good to our enemy," said Cleobu- 
lus, "and make him our friend." " Speak not evil to a friend, 
nor even to an enemy," said Pittacus, one of the Seven Wise 
Men. "It is more beautiful," said Valerius Maximus, "to 
overcome injury by the power of kindness, than to oppose to it 
the obstinacy of hatred." Maximus Tyrius has a special 



228 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



chapter on the treatment of injuries, and concludes : " If he 
who injures does wrong, he who returns the injury does 
equally wrong." Plutarch, in his essay, " How to profit by our 
enemies," bids us sympathize with them in affliction and aid 
their needs. "A philosopher, when smitten, must love those 
who smite him, as if he were the father, the brother, of all 
men," said Epictetus. " It is peculiar of man," said Marcus 
Antoninus, "to love even those who do wrong. * * Ask thyself 
daily to how many ill-minded persons thou hast shown a kind 
disposition." He compares the wise and humane soul to a 
spring of pure water, which blesses even him who curses it ; 
and the Oriental story likens such a soul to the sandal-wood 
tree, which imparts its fragrance even to the axe which cuts it 
down. 

How it cheers and enlarges us to hear of these great 
thoughts and know that the Divine has never been without a 
witness on earth ! How it must sadden the soul to disbelieve 
them. Worse yet to be in a position where one has to hope 
that they may not be correctly reported — that one by one they 
may be explained away. * * For instance, as the great char- 
acter of Buddha has come out from the darkness, within fifty 
years, how these reluctant people have struggled against it, still 
desiring to escape. " Save us, O God ! " they have seemed 
to say, " from the distress of believing that so many years ago 
there was a sublime human life. * * Anything rather than 
believe that there is a light which lighteth every man tha^ 
cometh into the world. 

For this purpose the very facts of history must be suppressed 
or explained away. Sir George Mackenzie, in his " Travels in 
Iceland, ' says that the clergy prevented till 1630, with "mis- 
taken zeal, " the publication of the Scandinavian Eddas. Hue, 
the Roman Catholic Missionary, described in such truthful 
colors the religious influence of Buddhism in Thibet, that his 
book was put in the index expurgatorius at Rome. Balmes, a 
learned Roman Catholic writer, declares that "Christianity is 
stripped of a portion of its honors" if we trace back any high 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



229 



standard of female purity to the ancient Germans ; and so he 
coolly sets aside as "poetical" the plain statements of the accu- 
rate Tacitus. If we are to believe the accounts given of the 
Jewish Essenes by Josephus, De Quincey thinks, the claims 
made by Christianity are annihilated. " If Essenism could 
make good its pretensions, there, at one blow, would be an end 
of Christianity, which, in that case, is not only superseded as 
an idle repetition of a religious system already published, but 
a criminal plagiarism. Nor can the wit of man evade the 
conclusion." 

And what makes this conclusiveness more repulsive is its 
modernness. Paul himself quoted from the sublime hymn of 
Cleanthes to prove to the Greeks that they too recognized 
the Fatherhood of God. The early Christian apologists, living 
face to face with the elder religions, made no exclusive claims. 
Tertullian declared the soul to be an older authority than 
prophecy, and its voice the gift of God from the beginning. 
Justin Martyr said : "Those who live according to Reason are 
Christians, though you may call them atheists." " The same 
God," said Clement, "to whom we owe the Old and New Tes- 
tament, gave also to the Greeks their philosophy, by which He 
is glorified among them. " 

How few modern sects reach even this point of impar- 
tiality? "There never was a time," says a distinguished Eu- 
ropean preacher, "when there did not exist an infinite gulf 
between the ideas of the ancients and the ideas of Christianity. 
There is an end of Christianity if men agree in thinking the 
contrary." And an eminent Unitarian preacher in America, 
Rev. A. P. Peabody, says : " If the truths of Christianity aire 
intuitive and self-evident, how is it that they formed no part of 
any man's consciousness till the advent of Christ?" How can 
any one look history in the face, how can any man open even 
the dictionary of any ancient language, and yet say this? 
What word sums up the highest Christian virtue, if not philan. 
thropy? And yet the word is a Greek word, and was used in 
the same sense before Christendom existed. 



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Fortunately there have always been men whose larger minds 
could adapt themselves to the truth, instead of narrowing the 
truth to them. In William Penn's "No Cross No Crown," 
one-half the pages are devoted to the religious testimony of 
Christians, and one-half to the non-Christian world. * * * 

And, if it is thus hard to do historical justice, it is far harder 
to look with candor upon contemporary religions. Thus the 
Jesuit Father Ripa thought that Satan had created the Buddhist 
religion on purpose to bewilder the Christian church. There 
we see a creed possessing more votaries than any in the world, 
numbering nearly one-third of the human race. Its traditions 
go back to a founder whose record is stainless and sublime. 
It has the doctrine of the Real Presence, the Madonna and 
Child, the invocation of the dead, monasteries and pilgrimages, 
celibacy and tonsure, relics, rosaries, and holy water. Wherever 
it has spread, it has broken down the barrier of caste. It 
teaches that all men are brethren, and makes them prove it by 
their acts ; it diffuses gentleness and self-sacrificing benevolence. 
" It has become, " as Neander admits, "to many tribes of people 
a means of transition from the wildest barbarism to semi-civil- 
ization." Tennent, living amid the lowest form of it in Cey- 
lon, says that its code of morals is " second only to that of 
Christianity itself," and enjoins every conceivable virtue and 
excellence. It is coming among us, represented by many 
of the Chinese, and a San Francisco merchant, a Christian of 
the Episcopal Church, told me that, on conversing with their 
educated men, he found in them a religious faith quite as 
enlightened as their own. Shall we not rejoice in this consoling 
discovery? "Yes," said the simple-hearted Abbe Hue : so he 
published his account of Buddhism, and saw it excommunicated. 
" No !" said Father Ripa, "it is the invention of the devil !" 

With a steady wave of progress Mohammedanism is sweep- 
ing through Africa, where Christianity scarcely advances a step. 
Wherever Mohammedanism reaches, schools and libraries are 
established, gambling and drunkenness cease, theft and false- 
hood diminish, polygamy is limited, woman begins to be 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



elevated and has property rights guaranteed ; and, instead of 
witnessing human sacrifices, you see the cottager reading the 
Koran at her door, like the Christian cottager in Cowper's 
description. " Its gradual extension," says an eye-witness, "is 
gradually but surely modifying the negro. Within the last half 
century the humanizing influence of the Koran is acknowledged 
by all who are acquainted with the interior tribes. " So in 
India, Mohammedanism makes converts by thousands (accord- 
ing to Col. Sleeman, than whom there can be no more 
intelligent authority) where Christianity makes but a handful ; 
and this he testifies, because in Mohammedanisn there is no 
spirit of caste, while Christians have a caste of their own, and 
will not put converts on an equality. Do we rejoice in this 
great work of progress ? No ! One would think we were still 
in the time of the crusades by the way we ignore the providen- 
tial value of Mohammedanism. 

The one unpardonable sin is exclusiveness. Any form of 
religion is endangered when we bring it to the test of facts ; for 
none on earth can bear that test. There never existed a per- 
son, nor a book, nor an institution, which did not share the 
merits and the drawbacks of its rivals. Granting all that can 
be established as to the debt of the world to the very best dis- 
pensation, the fact still remains, that there is not a single 
maxim, nor idea, nor application, nor triumph, that any single 
religion can claim as exclusively its own. Neither faith, nor 
love, nor truth, nor disinterestedness, nor forgiveness, nor 
patience, nor peace, nor equality, nor education, nor missionary 
effort, nor prayer, nor honesty, nor the sentiment of brother- 
hood, nor reverence for woman, nor the spirit of humility, nor 
the fact of martyrdom, nor any other good thing, is monopo- 
lized by any one or any half dozen forms of faith. All religions 
recognize, more or less distinctly, these principles ; all do some- 
thing to exemplify, something to dishonor them. Travelers 
find virtue in a seeming minority in all other countries, and for- 
get that they left it in a minority at home. A Hindoo girl, 
astonished at the humanity of a British officer towards her 



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father, declared her surprise that any one could display so 
much kindness who did not believe in the god Vishnu. 

What religion stands highest in moral results if not Chris- 
tianity ? Yet the slave-trader belongs to Christendom as well 
as the saint. If we say that Christendom was not truly repre- 
sented by the slaves in the hold of John Newton's slave-ship, 
but only by the prayers which he read every day, as he narrates, 
in the cabin, — then we must admit that Buddhism is not to be 
judged merely by the prostrations before Fo, but by the learn- 
ing of its lamaseries and the beneficence of its people. The 
reformed Brahmos of India complain that Christian nations 
force alcoholic drinks on their nation, despite their efforts ; and 
the greater humanity of Hindoos towards animals has been, 
according to Dr. Hedge, a serious embarrassment to our mis- 
sionaries. So men interrupt the missionaries in China, accord- 
ing to Coffin's late book, by asking them why, if their doctrines 
be true, Christian nations forced opium on an unwilling empe- 
ror, who refused to the last to receive money from the traffic. 
What a history has been our treatment of the American Indians ! 
The delegation from the Society of Friends reported last year 
that an Indian chief brought a young Indian before a white 
commissioner to give evidence, and the commissioner hesitated 
a little in receiving a part of the testimony, when the chief said 
with great emphasis, " O you may believe what he says : he 
tells the truth ; he has never seen a white man before ! " In 
South ey's Wesley, there is an account of an Indian whom Wes- 
ley met in Georgia, and who thus summed up his objections to 
Christianity : " Christian much drunk ! Christian beat man ! 
Christian tell lies ! Devil Christian ! Me no Christian !" What 
then ? All other religions show the same disparity between 
belief and practice, and each is safe till it tries to exclude the 
rest. Test each sect by its best or its worst as you will, by its 
high-water mark of virtue or its low-water mark of vice. But 
falsehood begins when you measure the ebb of any other 
religion against the flood-tide of your own. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



233 



There is a noble and a base side to every history. The 
same religion varies in different soils. Christianity is not the 
same in England and in Italy; in Armenia and in Ethiopia; in 
the Protestant and Catholic cantons in Switzerland ; in Massa- 
chusetts, in Georgia, and in Utah. Neither is Buddhism the 
same in China, in Thibet and in Ceylon; nor Mohammedanism 
in Turkey and in Persia. We have no right to pluck the best 
fruit from one tree, the worst from another, and then say the 
tree is known by its fruits. I say again, Christianity has, on 
the whole, produced the highest results of all, in manners, in 
arts, in energy. Yet when Christianity had been five centuries 
in the world, the world's only hope seemed to be in the supe- 
rior strength and purity of pagan races. " Can we wonder, " 
wrote Salvian (a. d. 400), " if our lands have been given over 
to the barbarians by God ? since that which we have polluted 
by our profligacy the barbarians have cleansed by their chas- 
tity. ;> At the end of its first thousand years, Christianity could 
only show Europe at its lowest ebb of civilization, in a state 
which Guizot calls " death by the extinction of every faculty." 
The barbarians had only deteriorated since their conversion ; 
the great empires were falling to pieces ; and the only bright 
spot in Europe was Mohammedan Spain, whose universities 
taught all Christendom science, as its knights taught chivalry. 
Even at the end of fifteen hundred years, the Turks, having 
conquered successively Jerusalem and Constantinople, seemed 
altogether the most powerful nation of the world ; their empire 
was compared to the Roman empire ; they were gaining all the 
time. * * * * 

For four hundred years it has been safe for Christendom to 
be boastful, but, if at any time during the fifteen hundred years 
previous the comparison had been made, the boasting would 
have been the other way. 

We see what Christianity has done for Europe; but we do 
not remember how much Europe has done for Christianity. 
Take away the influence of race and climate ; take away Greek 
literature, and Mohammedan chivalry, and the art of printing ; 
IS 



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set the decline of Christianity in Asia and Africa against its 
gain in Europe and America — and whatever superiority may 
be left is not enough on which to base exclusive claims. The 
recent scientific advances of the age are a brilliant theme for 
the rhetorician ; but those who make these advances are 
the last men to ascribe them to the influence of any exclusive 
religion. 

Indeed, it is only very lately that the claim of superiority 
in civilization and the arts of life has been made in behalf of 
Christianity. Down to the time of the Reformation it was 
usual to contrast the intellectual and practical superiority of the 
heathen to the purely spiritual claims of the church. "The 
church has always been accustomed," says the Roman Catholic 
Digby, " to see genius and learning in the ranks opposed to 
her." " From the beginning of the world," said Luther, "there 
have always been among the heathens higher and rarer people, 
of greater and more exalted understanding, more excellent 
diligence and skill in all arts, than among Christians, or the 
people of God." " Do we excel in intellect, in learning, in 
decency of morals ? " said Melancthon. " By no means. 
But we excel in the true knowledge and worship and adoration 
of God." 

Historically, of course, we are Christians, and can enjoy 
the advantage which that better training has given, just as the 
favored son of a king may enjoy his special advantages and 
yet admit that the less favored are equally sons. The name of 
Christianity only ceases to excite respect when it is used to 
represent any false or exclusive claims, or when it takes the 
place of the older and grander words, " Religion " and " Vir- 
tue." When we fully comprehend the sympathy of religions 
we shall deal with other faiths on equal terms. We shall cease 
trying to free men from one superstition by inviting them into 
another. The true missionaries are the men inside each 
religion who have outgrown its limitations. But no Christian 
missionary has ever yet consented to meet the men of other 
religions upon the common ground of Theism. In Bishop 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



235 



Heber's time, the Hindoo reformer Swaamee Narain was 
preaching purity and peace, the unity of God, and the abolition 
of castes. Many thousands of men followed his teachings, 
and whole villages and districts were raised from the worst 
immorality by his labors, as the Bishop himself bears witness. 
But the good Bishop seems to have despaired of him as soon 
as Swaamee Narain refused conversion to Christianity, making 
the objection that God was not incarnated in one man, but 
in many. Then came Ram Mohun Roy, forty years ago, and 
argued from the Vedas against idolatry, caste, and the burning 
of widows. He also refused to be called a Christian, and the 
missionaries denounced him. Now comes Keshub Chunder 
Sen, with his generous utterances : " We profess the universal 
and absolute religion, whose cardinal doctrines are the Father- 
hood of God and the Brotherhood of Man, and which accepts 
the truths of all scriptures, and honors the prophets of all 
nations." The movement reaches thousands whom no foreign 
influence could touch; yet the Methodist missionaries denounce 
it in the name of Christ, and even the little Unitarian mission 
opens against it a battery of a single gun. It is the same with 
our treatment of the Jews; and yet the reformed Jews in 
America have already gone in advance of the most liberal 
Christian sects in their width of religious sympathy. " The 
happiness of man," says Rabbi Wise, in speaking for them, 
" depends on no creed and no book; it depends on the 
dominion of truth, which is the Redeemer and Savior, the 
Messiah and the King of Glory. " 

It is our happiness to live in a time when all religions are 
at last outgrowing their mythologies, and emancipated men are 
stretching out their hands to share together " the luxury of a 
religion that does not degrade." The progressive Brahmos of 
India, the Jewish leaders in America, the Free Religious 
Association among ourselves, are teaching essentially the same 
principles, seeking the same ends. The Jewish congregations 
in Baltimore were the first to contribute for the education of 
the freedmen ; the Buddhist Temple in San Francisco was the 



236 



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first edifice of that city draped in mourning after the murder 
of President Lincoln ; the Parsees of the East sent contribu- 
tions to the Sanitary Commission. The great religions of the 
world are but larger sects; they come together, like the lesser 
sects, for works of benevolence ; they share the same aspira- 
tions, and every step in the progress of each brings it nearer 
to all the rest. The reign of heaven on earth will not be 
called the Kingdom of Christ nor of Buddha — it will be called 
the Church of God, or the Commonwealth of Man. I do not 
wish to belong to a religion only, but to the religion ; it must 
not include less than the piety of the world. 

If one insists on being exclusive, where shall he find a 
home ? What hold has any Protestant sect among us on a 
thoughtful mind ? They are too little, too new, too inconsist- 
ent, too feeble. What are these children of a day compared 
with that magnificent Church of Rome, which counts its years 
by centuries, and its votaries by millions, and its martyrs by 
myriads ; with kings for confessors and nations for converts j 
carrying to all the earth one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and 
claiming for itself no less title than the Catholic, the Universal? 
Yet in conversing with Catholics one is again repelled by the 
extreme juvenility, and modernness, and scanty numbers of 
their church. It is the superb elder brother of our little sects, 
doubtless, and seems to have most of the family fortune. But 
the whole fortune is so small ! and even the elder brother is so 
young ! Even the Romanist ignores traditions more vast, 
antiquity more remote, a literature of piety more grand. His 
temple suffocates: give us a shrine still vaster; something than 
this Catholicism more catholic ; not the Church of Rome, but 
of God and man ; a Pantheon, not a Parthenon ; the true 
sempery ubique, et ab omnibus, the Religion of the Ages, Natu- 
ral Religion. 

I was once in a foreign cathedral when, after the three days 
of mourning in Holy Week, came the final day of Hallelujah. 
The great church had looked dim and sad, with the innumerable 
windows closely curtained, since the moment when the symbol- 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



237 



ical bier of Jesus was borne to its symbolical tomb beneath the 
High Altar, while the three mystic candles blazed above it. 
There had been agony and beating of cheeks in the darkness^ 
while ghostly processions moved through the aisles, and fearful 
transparencies were unrolled from the pulpit. The priests 
kneeled in gorgeous robes, chanting, with their heads resting 
on the altar steps; the multitude hung expectant on their 
words. Suddenly burst forth a new chant, " Gloria in ExceL 
sis I " In that instant every curtain was rolled aside, the 
cathedral was bathed in glory, the organs clashed, the bells 
chimed, flowers were thrown from the galleries, little birds were 
let loose, friends embraced and greeted one another, and we 
looked down upon a tumultuous sea of faces, all floating in a 
sunlit haze. And yet, I thought, the whole of this sublime 
transformation consisted in letting in the light of day ! These 
priests and attendants, each stationed at his post, had only 
removed the darkness they themselves had made. Unveil these 
darkened windows, but remove also these darkening walls; the 
temple itself is but a lingering shadow of that gloom. Instead 
of its coarse and stifling incense, give us God's pure air, and 
teach us that the broadest religion is the best 



23 8 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



CHAPTER XIV. 



AMERICA. 



THE UNITED STATES. 



Inward Stillness — The Divine Principle Within. 

There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human 
mind, which in different places and ages hath had different 
names ; it is, however, pure, and proceeds from God. is 
deep and inward, confi?ied to 110 form of religion, nor excluded 
front any, when the heart stands in perfect sincerity. In whom- 
soever this takes root and grows, they become brethren. 

The necessity of an inward stillness hath appeared clear to 
my mind. In true silence, strength is renewed, and the mind 
is weaned from all things, save as they may be enjoyed in the 
Divine will ; and a lowliness in outward living, opposite to 
worldly honor, becomes truly acceptable to us. In the desire 
after outward gain the mind is prevented from a perfect atten- 
tion to the voice of Christ ; yet being weaned from all things, 
except as they may be enjoyed in the Divine will, the pure 
light shines into the soul. Where the fruits of the spirit which 
is of this world are brought forth by many who profess to be 
led by the Spirit of truth, and cloudiness is felt to be gathering 
over the visible church, the sincere in heart, who abide in true 
stillness, and are exercised therein before the Lord, for his 
name's sake, have knowledge of Christ in the fellowship of his 
sufferings ; and inward thankfulness is felt at times, that through 
Divine love our own wisdom is cast out, and that forward, 
active spirit in us is subjected, which would rise and do some- 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



239 



thing without the pure leadings of the spirit of Christ. * * 
In this silence we learn to abide in the Divine will, and there 
feel that we have no cause to promote except that alone in 
which the light of life directs us. * * * 

This state, in which every motion from the selfish spirit 
yielded to pure love, I may acknowledge with gratitude is often 
opened before me, as a pearl to seek after. 

At times when I have felt true love opening my heart 
towards my fellow creatures, and have been engaged in weighty 
conversation in the cause of righteousness, the instructions I 
have received under these exercises in regard to the true use of 
the outward gifts of God, have made a deep and lasting 
impression on my mind. I have beheld how the desire to pro- 
vide wealth and to uphold a delicate life, has grievously 
entangled many, and has been like a snare to their offspring; 
and though some have been affected with a sense of their diffi- 
culties, and have appeared desirous, at times, to be helped out 
of them, yet for want of abiding in the humbling power of 
truth they have continued in these entanglements ; expensive 
living in parents and children hath called for a large supply, 
and in answering this call the "faces of the poor" have been 
ground away, and made thin through hard dealing. — John 
Woolman, "A Friend" New Jersey, 1J20. 



THOMAS PAINE. 



Sayings and Opinions. 

— I believe in one God, and no more, and I hope for 

happiness beyond this life. 

I believe in the equality of man ; and that religious 
duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring 
to make our fellow creatures happy. 

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish 



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Church, the Greek or Turkish Church, by the Protestant 
Church, or by any church that I know of. My own mind is 
my own church. It is necessary to the happiness of man that 
he be mentally faithful to himself. 

Infidelity does not consist in believing or disbelieving ; it 
consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. 

It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief that mental 
lying has produced in society. When a man has so far cor- 
rupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe 
his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has 
prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. 

The belief of a God, so far from having anything of a 
mystery in it, is of all beliefs the most easy, because it arises 
to us out of necessity. And the practice of moral truth, or in 
other words, a practical imitation of the moral goodness of 
God, is no other than our acting toward each other as he 
acts benignedly towards all. 

We cannot serve God in the manner we serve those who 
cannot do without such service ; aud therefore the only idea 
we can have of serving God is of contributing to the happiness 
of the creation he has made. This cannot be done by spend- 
ing a recluse life in selfish devotion. 

— When men, either from policy or pious fraud, set up 
systems of religion incompatible with the word or works of 
God in the creation, and not only above, but repugnant to 
human comprehension, they were under the necessity of 
inventing or adopting a word that should serve as a bar to all 
questions, inquiries, or speculations. 

The word mystery answered this purpose ; and thus it has 
happened that religion, which in itself is without mystery, has 
been corrupted into a fog of mysteries. As mystery answered 
all general purposes, miracle followed as an occasional auxiliary. 
The former served to bewilder the mind, the latter to puzzle 
the senses. 

Instead of studying theology, as is now done, out of the 
Bible and Testament, the meanings of which books are 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



2 4 I 



always controverted, and the authenticity of which is disproved, 
it is necessary that we refer to the Bible of the creation. The 
principles we discover there are eternal, and of divine origin : 
they are the foundation of all the science that exists in the 
world, and must be the foundation of theology. 

We can know God only through his works. We cannot 
have a conception of any one attribute but by following some 
principle that leads to it. We have only a confused idea of 
his power, if we have not the means of comprehending some- 
thing of its immensity. We can have no idea of his wisdom 
but by knowing the order and manner in which it acts. The 
principles of science lead to this knowledge ; for the creator 
of man is the Creator of science, and it is through that 
medium that man can see God, as it were, face to face. 



ELIAS HICKS. 
The Light Within. 

Now my whole drift is to gather the minds of the people 
to the light within, which is the same as the grace of God, the 
manifestation of the spirit that reproves for evil. It was this 
that Jesus recommended to his disciples, it was this light which 
George Fox preached ; it is an emanation from God in the soul 
of man, by his power and spirit ; and he is everywhere, for in 
Him we live, move, and have our being. * * * 

And how wonderfully he has directed the birds to fly from 
one limb to another, and to effect that which will make them 
happy. And who is it that guides them? God Almighty, 
by the sense that he has given them, and his mercy is every- 
where ; not a blade of grass could grow, were he not the pre- 
server of it. He fills all things, and is everywhere present. 
* * * tt The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath 
appeared to all men. " This must comprehend all mankind, 
who have a thousand different notions about outward exercises 



242 



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in religious matters, in which there is no religion at all. There 
is no religion in anything but in this divine grace ; in being 
taught by it, and coming under its leading. * 

And what was this " Comforter, " spoken of in the Scripture? 
It was the spirit of truth, the light and life of God in the soul. 
There never was any other Comforter, and there never will be ; 
it is that principle which is the same yesterday, to-day, and 
forever ; and he abideth in us. 

Jesus told his disciples it would not be out of them, " For 
he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you." * * No, 
verily, there never was any other Saviour than God manifesting 
himself in man ; for " no man knoweth the things of God, but 
the spirit of God. " * * * * Oh ! that we might be 
encouraged to gather to this standard — don't mind the name : 
mind the nature, mind its effects ; this is enough for us to do. 
Don't dispute about names, — for if we do, we are dark and 
blind. 



Tradition and Popular Opinion. 

But having for a considerable time past found, from full 
conviction, that scarcely anything is so .baneful to the present 
and future happiness and welfare of mankind, as a submission 
to tradition and popular opinion, I have been led to see the 
necessity of investigating for myself all customs and doctrines 
of a moral and religious nature, either verbally or historically 
communicated, by the best and greatest of men or angels, and 
not to sit down satisfied with anything but a plain, clear testi- 
mony of the spirit and word of life and light, in my own heart 
and conscience. * * * 

And how much more reasonable it is to suppose, that any 
inspired teacher of the present day should be led to speak 
more truly and plainly to the states of the people to whom he 
is led to communicate, than any doctrines delivered seventeen 
hundred years ago, to a people very differently circumstanced, 
I leave to any rational mind to judge. * * * 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



243 



I well remember how oft my conscience has smote me, when 
I have been endeavoring to support the Society's belief of the 
Scriptures that they very far excelled all other writings, that 
the fear of men had too great a share in leading me to adopt 
the sentiment, and custom rendered it more easy ; but I never 
was clear in my own mind, and had I carefully attended to my 
own feelings, I should have been preserved, I believe, in a line 
of more consistency in that respect. 

Atonement. 

Surely is it possible that any rational being that has any 
right sense of justice and mercy, would be willing to accept 
forgiveness of his sins on such terms? Would he not rather 
go forward and offer himself wholly up to suffer all the penal- 
ties due to his crimes, rather than the innocent should suffer? 
Nay, was he so hardy as to acknowledge a willingness to be 
saved through such a medium, would it not prove that he stood 
in direct opposition to every principle of justice and honesty, 
of mercy and love, and showed himself a pure selfish creature ? 

Essentials in Religion. 

Inward sanctity, pure love, disinterested attachment to 
God and man, obedience of heart and life, sincere excellence 
of character, this is the one thing needful, this is the essential 
thing in religion ; and all things else, ministers, churches, ordi- 
nances, places of worship, all are but means, helps, secondary 
influences, and utterly worthless when separated from this. To 
imagine that God regards anything but this, that he looks at 
anything but the heart, is to dishonor him, to express a mourn- 
ful insensibility to his pure character. Goodness, purity, virtue, 
this is the only distinction in God's sight. This is intrinsically, 
essentially, everlastingly, and by its own nature, lovely, beauti- 
ful, glorious, divine. It owes nothing to time, to circumstance, 
to outward confessions. It shines by its own light. It is God 



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himself dwelling in the human soul. Can any man think lightly 
of it because it has not grown up in a certain church, or exalt 
any church above it? My friends, one of the grandest truths 
of religion is, the supreme importance of character, of virtue, 
of that divine spirit which shone out in Christ. The grand 
heresy is, to substitute anything for this, whether creed, or 
form, or church. One of the greatest wrongs to Christ is, to 
despise his character, his virtue, in a disciple who happens to 
wear a different name from our own. 

When I represent to myself true virtue or goodness — not 
that which *s made up of outward proprieties and prudent cal- 
culations, but that which chooses duty for its own sake, and 
as the first concern ; which respects impartially the rights of 
every human being ; which labors and suffers with patient reso- 
lution for truth, and others' welfare ; which blends energy and 
sweetness, deep humility and self-reverence; which places joy- 
ful faith in the perfection of God, communes with him intimately, 
and strives to subject to his pure will, all thought, imagination, 
and desire ; which lays hold on the promise of everlasting life, 
and in the strength of this hope endures calmly and firmly the 
sorest evils of the present state — when I set before me this 
virtue, all the distinctions on which men value themselves fade 
away. Wealth is poor, worldly honor is mean, outward forms 
are beggarly elements. Condition, country, church, all sink 
into unimportance. Before this simple greatness I bow, I 
revere. The robed priest, the gorgeous altar, the great assem- 
bly, the pealing organ, all the exteriors of religion, vanish from 
my sight as I look at the good and great man, the holy, disin- 
terested soul. Even I, with vision so dim, with heart so cold, 
can see and feel the divinity, the grandeur of true goodness. 
How then must God regard it ? To his pure eyes how lovely 
must it be ! And can any of us turn from it, because some 
water has not been dropped on its forehead, or some bread 
put into its lips by a minister or priest ; or because it has not 
learned to repeat some mysterious creed, which a church or 
human council has ordained ? 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



245 



My friends, reverence virtue, holiness, the upright will, 
which inflexibly cleaves to duty and the pure law of God. 
Reverence nothing in comparison with it. Regard this as the 
end, and all outward services as the means. Judge of men by 
this. Think no man the better, no man the worse, for the 
church he belongs to. Try him by his fruits. Expel from your 
breasts the demon of sectarianism, narrowness, bigotry, intol- 
erance. This is not, as we are apt to think, a slight sin. It is 
a denial of the supremacy of goodness. It sets up something, 
whether a form or dogma, above the virtue of the heart and 
the life. Sectarianism immures itself in its particular church 
as in a dungeon, and is there cut off from the free air, the 
cheerful light, the goodly prospects, the celestial beauty of the 
church universal. * * * 

We have grown up under different influences. We bear 
different names. But if we purpose solemnly to do God's will, 
and are following the precepts and example of Christ, we are 
one church, and let nothing divide us. Diversities of opinion 
may incline us to worship under different roofs ; or diversities 
of tastes or habit to worship with different forms. But these 
varieties are not schisms; they do not break the unity of 
Christ's church. We may still honor, and love, and rejoice in 
one another's spiritual life and progress, as truly as if we were 
cast into one and the same unyielding form. God loves variety 
in nature and in the human soul, nor does he reject it in Chris- 
tian worship. In many great truths, in those which are most 
quickening, purifying and consoling, we all, I hope, agree. 
There is, too, a common ground of practice, aloof from all 
controversy, on which we may all meet. We may all unite 
hearts and hands in doing good, in fulfilling God's purposes of 
love towards our race, in toiling and suffering for the cause of 
humanity, in spreading intelligence, freedom and virtue, in 
making God known for the reverence, love, and imitation of 
his creatures, in resisting the abuses and corruptions of past 
ages, in exploring and drying up the sources of poverty, in 
rescuing the fallen from intemperance, in succoring the orphan 



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and widow, in enlightening and elevating the depressed portions 
of the community, in breaking the yoke of the oppressed and 
enslaved, in exposing and withstanding the spirit and horrors 
of war, in sending God's word to the ends of the earth, in 
redeeming the world from sin and woe. The angels and pure 
spirits who visit our earth come not to join a sect, but to do 
good to all. May this universal charity descend on us, and 
possess our hearts; may our narrowness, exclusiveness, and 
bigotry melt away under this mild celestial fire. Thus we shall 
not only join ourselves to Christ's Universal Church on earth, 
but to the Invisible Church, to the innumerable company of 
the just made perfect, in the mansions of everlasting purity 
and peace. — William E. Charming. 



Man's Demands, God's Commands. 

Man's natural demands are God's only commands. This 
is a great and comprehensive proposition; and, in one sentence, 
answers all questions respecting arbitrary documentary Reve^ 
lations, given to one or more chosen ones, to be communicated 
by them to the rest of mankind. The laws, or commands of 
God given to thee, or to me, or to any human being, are made 
known to us in the demands of our Nature. To know these 
demands is all we need to know, healthfully to supply them 
is all we need to do, in order that we may become all that we 
are designed to be and all that we are capable of being. He 
who most perfectly understands the demands of his Nature, 
body and soul, most perfectly understands the will of God ; he 
who most perfectly supplies those demands, most perfectly 
obeys God. He walks with God, and he is the only man who 
is after God's own heart. * * * 

Does human nature respond approvingly to the spirit and 
practice of self-sacrifice for the good of others ? Does it ever 
and without fail feel a conscious sense of well-doing and self- 
respect in the feeling and the act ? Is it a demand of our 
social nature? Can human beings associate in pairs, or in 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



247 



millions, harmoniously and happily, on any other basis? Can 
we live in society, and maintain order and harmony, except on 
the principle that we are never to injure others for our benefit? 
The universal human heart accords its deepest and most 
earnest approval to the spirit and practice of self-sacrifice ; and 
recognizes the self-abnegationist who, in all circumstances and 
relations, is true to his great idea, as the true hero or heroine 
of the race ; as Earth's true King or Queen. — Henry C. Wright. 

Value of Self-Respect. 

There is one person whose respect and reverence I seek 
and prize more than the respect and reverence of any or all 
others; — that person is Henry C. Wright. — H. C. Wright 

Sacredness of Parental Self-Abnegation. 

That Father ! — See that man, toiling without ceasing ! 
Up early, and down late ! Abroad to his daily labor, promptly 
and energetically ! Work, work, work, and that with a will ! 
Clouds and sunshine, calm and storm, heat and cold, light 
and darkness are alike to him. Plan and execute ! Every 
power of body and mind are on the alert, regardless of his 
own comfort, health and life. He thinks not of self ; he feels 
not for self ; or if he does, it is as the stay of those who 
depend upon him. What is the secret of this daring, tireless 
energy ? Enter his home, his nursery ; there sleeps, creeps, or 
romps in joyous glee the inspiration and interpretation of his 
life. His child, his loving, gentle daughter, with arms encircling 
his neck, and in accents sweeter than tones of cherubs saying, 
" My father ! " He lives for his child. Self-abnegation, a ten- 
der anxiety for the existence, the physical, intellectual, social 
and spiritual health and happiness of his child, controls him 
in all his actions and relations to her, from her concep- 
tion to her present growth. In the relation in which she 
originated ; in watching and guarding her development before 



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and after her birth ; in every effort made to guard her tender 
life against discordant and diseased influences, and subject it 
to those that are healthy and happy, self-renunciation, not 
mere self-gratification — his child's life and happiness, and not 
self-indulgence, have controlled his actions. He feels a proud 
consciousness of this fact, and the out-gushing affections, and 
confidence, and the harmonious, joyous nature of his child, are 
his great reward. She is the gem in his crown of paternal glory, 
which his life of self-abnegation, in his relations to her, has 
placed there. As that daughter grows up to womanhood, and 
becomes assured that in all his relations to her, her existence, 
health and happiness, and not mere self-indulgence, controlled 
her father — will not her heart twine its tenderest affections 
around him, in grateful and joyous martyrdom? Between a 
father and daughter thus begotten, developed, born and 
matured under the influence of self-abnegation, rather than self- 
gratification, the relation can bring naught but heaven to both. 

That Mother ! — Think of the forebodings of her heart, her 
ever-present anxiety and care, during the pre-natal life of her 
child ! Her plans, her sympathies, her actions, all relate to its 
welfare. She is aware, and ever acts on the conviction, that 
every action of her brain, and every pulsation of her heart, is 
making its impress on the body and soul of the new life that is 
developed within her organism. The air she breathes, the food 
she eats, the liquid she drinks, the home she lives in, the com- 
pany she keeps, the pleasures indulged in, her conditions of 
body and soul, and all her surroundings — in a word, all the 
experiences of her interior and exterior life are momentarily 
stamping themselves on the organic conditions of her child, 
and embodying themselves in its character and destiny, in the 
eternity that lies before it, and must receive it. This she knows 
and regards as the one fact that should guide her life. In all 
these actions of her physical, intellectual and social life, the 
new immortal life -being developed beneath her heart is her 
one thought, the controlling power of her life. Whether she 
eats or drinks, works or rests, sleeps or wakes, whatever she 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



249 



does, she does to the glory of her child. Her one absorbing 
anxiety is, how to confer on her child a beautiful, healthy body 
and soul ; and to organize into it a pure and noble character 
and destiny. She would give existence to one whose life, 
in all its great Future, shall shine brighter and brighter unto 
the perfect day ; whose track across the horizon of Eternity, 
shall be like the course of the sun across the heavens, shedding 
only light, warmth and beauty over the world. What hopes, 
what visions of heroism and nobleness, fill that maternal heart, 
touching the destiny of her child ! She spares no effort to 
make her child all her own heart would have it, a child of 
God. What though in giving it birth an agony that can never 
be told is hers ? She, with dauntless resolution, with lofty 
bearing, and sublime resignation, sees the hour of her august 
martyrdom approach; and that hour past, she folds her babe to 
her bosom, and sings over it with a joy unspeakable and full of 
glory, a "Gloria in Excelsis. " See that mother bending over 
that infant son, with weary, wasting watchfulness ; with a toil 
that knows no rest, an anxiety that knows no sleep, a courage 
that never falters, and a vigilance that never slumbers, and with 
an energy and daring that no dangers can appal. What is her 
heart's inspiration ? What the power that sustains her ? What 
turned that timid, shrinking woman into a fearless, patient 
heroine ? Where is the secret of her power? It is the infant 
son that nestles in her bosom, and draws its life from hers. She 
sees, hears, sleeps, wakes, eats, drinks and lives, that she may 
bless her boy. Her very life is hid with her son in God. The 
mystery of that mother's life finds its only solution in her 
child. She is hungry that her son may eat, she is thirsty that 
he may drink ; she awakes that he may sleep ; she is cold, that 
he may be warm ; she is sick, that he may be well ; she suffers 
that he may rejoice ; she dies that he may live. 

Can that son forget that mother ? Never ! His existence 
is an ever-present memorial of her ; and till conscious exist- 
ence ceases, that mother will live in his tenderest and most 
ennobling recollections. With her patient renunciation of self 
16 



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for his good ; with her sleepless vigilance, and tender nursing 
in sickness ; with the tender watchfulness that anticipated his 
wants j with the sweet smile that chased away sorrow from his 
heart and sadness from his brow ; with the sweet kiss that 
sealed her forgiveness of all his faults ; ' with the self-forgetting 
love, and the tireless energy and all-enduring patience and 
fortitude that guarded his health and life, through helpless 
infancy, wayward childhood, and headstrong youth, — are associ- 
ated all the tenderest and most potential memories of his life. 
Can the image of that self-denying mother ever be stricken 
from his heart ? Never ! 

And when that son comes to know that his existence, his 
health and happiness, constitute the governing motive of her 
life, in his conception ; and that, in all her relations to him, 
during his gestational life, she regulated her drink, her sleep, 
her labor, her enjoyment, and her every action with reference 
to his welfare ; when he knows that her life before, as well as 
since his birth, was a life of utter self-abandonment to his life 
and happiness — will he not fold her to his heart and give her a 
place there, from which no other love can ever drive her ? 
Can coldness, distrust, concealment, or indifference ever enter 
into such a relation? Can discord and conflict ever come 
between such a mother and a son thus conceived, bora and 
reared? Never. And when the eyes of that mother are dim, 
when the beauty and vigor of her youth are gone, and the 
serene and noble aspects of age are settled on her brow, and 
her steps are feeble, the holy love and powerful arm of that 
grateful son, in whose eyes that mother's beauty and glory 
never shone so bright before, will encircle her and bear her 
onward to her home within the veil, there to watch and rejoice 
over him, and to await with maternal pride his coming. Such 
a son is of royal blood, and has a queenly mother. In her 
hand she holds a sceptre over an empire of greater power, and 
wider extent, than is that which rules an empire on which the 
sun never sets, — Henry C, Wright, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



Creeds. 

We believe and insist, that each and every rational and 
moral being, male and female, is under the highest obligation 
to form his or her own opinions about religion. Every one, 
we hold, is bound, and therefore should be left perfectly free to 
seek after, if happily he may find, the truth of God for himself; 
form his own creed, his own body of divinity; be fully per- 
suaded in his own miud as to what is true on every question 
that may arise respecting the character of God, the principles 
of the divine government, man's accountability, the design of 
his life in this world, and his destiny in the world to come. 

I am utterly unable to discover the benefit which ever has 
been or can be derived from a creed prescribed by human 
authority ; a formula of faith ; a system of doctrines devised 
and concocted by any man or any set of men, to be enforced 
upon the assent of other men, each of whom has an inalienable 
right to think for himself. Many and very grave evils, gross 
hypocricies, and atrocious cruelties, have everywhere, and in 
all ages, been the legitimate offspring of this assumption of 
authority to dictate to fellow men what they must believe. — 
Samuel J. May. 

Free Thought and Free Speech. 

Talk not of this or that subject being too sacred for inves- 
tigation ! Is it too much to assert, that there is but one object 
beneath the skies that is sacred — and that is, Man ? Surely, 
there is no government, no institution, no order, no rite, no 
day, no place, no building, no creed, no book, so sacred as he 
who was before every government, institution, order, rite, day, 
place, building, creed and book, and by whom all these things 
are to be regarded as nothing higher or better than means to 
an end, and that end his own elevation and happiness ; and he 
is to discard each and all of them, when they fail to do him 
service, or minister unto his necessities, 



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They are not of heaven, but of men, and may not, there- 
fore, receive the homage of any human being. Be assured 
that whatever cannot bear the test of the closest scrutiny, has 
no claim to human respect or confidence, even though it 
assume to be sacred in its origin, or given by inspiration of 
God, but must be treated as spurious, profane, dangerous. 

Let, then, the mind, and tongue, and press, be free. Let 
free discussion not only be tolerated, but encouraged and 
asserted, as indispensable to the freedom and welfare of man- 
kind. A forcible suppression of error is no aid to the cause of 
truth ; and to allow only just such views and sentiments to be 
spoken and circulated as we think are correct, is to combine 
bigotry and cowardice in equal proportions. If I give my 
children no other precept — if I leave them no "other example — ■ 
it shall be, a fearless, impartial, thorough investigation of every 
subject to which their attention may be called, and a hearty 
adoption of the principles which to them may seem true, 
whether those principles may agree or conflict with my own, or 
with those of any other person. The best protection which I 
can give them is to secure the unrestricted exercise of their 
reason, and to inspire them with true self-reliance. I will not 
arbitrarily determine, for them what are orthodox, or what are 
heretical sentiments, on any subject. I have no wish, no 
authority, no right to do so. I desire them to see, hear, and 
weigh both sides of every question. For example : — I wish 
them to examine whatever may be advanced in opposition to 
the doctrine of the divine inspiration of the bible, as freely as 
they do whatever they find in support of it ; to hear what may 
be urged against the doctrines, precepts, miracles, or life of 
Jesus, as readily as they do anything in their defence ; to see 
what arguments are adduced for a belief in the non-existence 
of God, as unreservedly as they do the evidence in favor of his 
existence. I shall teach them to regard no subject as too holy 
for examination ; to make their own convictions paramount to 
all human authority ; to reject whatever conflicts with their 
reason, no matter by whomsoever enforced ; and to prefer that 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



253 



which is clearly demonstrative to mere theory. And why do I 
intend to pursue such a course? Because I am not infallible, 
and therefore dare not put on the robes of infallibility. 
Because I think free inquiry is essential to the life of truth 
among mankind. * * * * 

"Whoever is afraid," says Bishop Watson, "of submitting 
any question, civil or religious, to the test of free discussion, 
seems to me to be more in love with his own opinion than with 
the truth ! " A noble sentiment for a man — much more for a 
prelate. 

No sentiment has been more greatly admired, or more fre- 
quently quoted since it was uttered, than that of Jefferson ; 
" Error of opinion may be safely tolerated, where Reason is 
left free to combat it." 

" Philosophy, wisdom and liberty," says Sir W. Drummond, 
" support each other. He who will not reason is a bigot, he 
who cannot is a fool, and he who dares not is a slave." * * 

Coleridge tersely says: "He who begins with loving Christi- 
anity better than truth, will end by loving himself better than 
either." 

Among all the noble sayings that fell from the lips of the 
great champion of English freedom, John Milton, not one 
deserves to be eternalized more than this : " Let Truth and 
Falsehood grapple : who ever knew Truth put to the worse in 
a free and open encounter ? " 

"The spirit of Jesus," says the amiable and courageous 
Abbe de la Mennais, " is a spirit of peace, of compassion and 
of love. They who persecute in his name, and who search 
men's consciences with the sword ; who torture the body to 
convert the soul ; who cause tears to flow, instead of drying 
them up ; these men have not the spirit of Christ, and are 
none of His." * * * * * 

True, it does not follow that a man is in the right because 
he is ready to engage in controversy ; for he may be devoid of 
sense, or disgustingly presumptuous, or extremely vain, or 
annoyingly combative, or incurably perverse. But this is 



254 



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certain : — he who is for forcibly stopping the mouth of his 
opponent, or for burning any man at the stake, or thrusting 
him into prison, or exacting a pecuniary fine from him, or 
impairing his means of procuring an honest livelihood, or 
treating him scornfully, on account of his peculiar views on any 
subject, whether relating to God or man, to time or eternity, is 
either under the dominion of a spirit of ruffianism or coward- 
ice, or animated by that fierce intolerance which characterized 
Saul of Tarsus, in his zeal to exterminate the heresy of Chris- 
tianity. On the other hand, he who forms his opinions from 
the dictates of enlightened reason, and sincerely desires 
to be led into all truth, dreads nothing so much as the suppres- 
sion of free inquiry — is at all times ready to give a reason for 
the hope that is in him — calmly listens to the objections of 
others — and feels nothing of anger or alarm lest his foundation 
shall be swept away by the waves of opposition. It is impos- 
sible, therefore, for him to be a persecutor, or to call upon the 
strong arm of violence to put a gag into the mouth of any one, 
however heretical in his sentiments. In proportion as we 
perceive and embrace the truth, do we become meek, heroic, 
magnanimous, divine. * * * * 

Let us speak plain : there is more force in names 
Than most men dream of ; and a lie may keep 
Its throne a whole age longer, if it skulk 
Behind the shield of some fair-seeming name. 
Let us call tyrants Tyrants, and maintain 
That only freedom comes by grace of God. 
And all that comes not by His grace must fall ; 
For men in earnest have no time to waste 
In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth. 

Let us call tyrants, Tyrants. Not to do so is to misuse 
language, to deal treacherously with freedom, to consent to the 
enslavement of mankind. It is neither an amiable nor a vir- 
tuous, but a foolish and pernicious thing, not to call things by 
their right names. John Knox, when he was reprimanded for 



EIBLE OF THE AGES. 



255 



his severity of speech, with much significance and great good 
sense declared that he would call a fig a fig, and a spade a 
spade. "Woe unto them" says one of the world's great prophets, 
"that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, 
and light for darkness ; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for 
bitter." 

Popular sins are never regarded by the people as sins ; they 
are never called sins. Terms are invented to describe them 
which fall upon the ear without harshness, and which, whenever 
uttered, give no alarm to the moral sense. This is what is called 
in Scripture the transformation of Satan into an angel of light. 
Thus, they who are engaged in upbuilding the horrid slave- 
system in this country, — a system which presents no single 
feature of decency or utility, and which John Wesley compre- 
hensively and justly called "the sum of all villainies" — the 
Southern slaveholders and their abettors, designate it as "the 
peculiar institution/' as "the corner-stone of our Republican 
edifice. " This description of it conveys no idea to the mind 
that is revolting or disagreeable, but quite the contrary— and 
yet it means theft and robbery ; it mea,ns assault and battery ; 
it means nakedness and penury ; it means yokes, fetters, brand- 
ing-irons, drivers and bloodhounds; it means cruelty and 
murder, concubinage and adultery ; it means the denial of all 
chances of intellectual and moral culture, gross mental dark- 
ness, and utter moral depravation ; it means the transformation 
•of those who, in the scale of creation, are but a little lower 
than the angels, to the condition ot brutes and the fate of 
perishable property ; in one sentence, it means the denial of 
God as the common Father of us all, and of Christ as our 
common Saviour and Redeemer. Still, we wrap it up in the 
fine linen of a deceitful phraseology — we call it the "peculiar 
institution" — outwardly, we garnish this sepulchre, and make it 
pleasant to the eye, but carefully hide the bones, the unclean- 
ness, and the pollution, which are festering beneath. * * * 

Of all the reformers who have appeared in the world — 
whether they were prophets, the Son of God, apostles, martyrs 



256 



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or confessors ; whether assailing one form of popular iniquity 
or another ; whether impeaching the rulers in the State, or the 
teachers in the Church ; not one of them has been exempt 
from the charge of dealing in abusive language, of indulging 
in coarse personalities, of libelling the characters of great and 
good men, of aiming to subvert time-honored and glorious 
institutions, of striking at the foundation of the social fabric, 
of being actuated by an irreligious spirit. The charge has ever 
been false, malicious, the very reverse of the truth ; and it is 
only the reformer himself who has been the victim of calumny, 
hatred and persecution. His accusations are denied, his 
impeachments are pronounced libellous, simply because the 
giant iniquity which he assails has subdued to its own evil pur- 
poses all the religious and political elements of the land, and 
everywhere passes current as both necessary and reputable. 
Of Jesus it was said, "This man is not of God ! he keepeth 
not the Sabbath day ; he is a blasphemer ; he hath a devil. " 
Of the Apostles it was said, "They are pestilent and seditious 
fellows, who go about seeking to turn the world upside down. " 
And Paul declares that they were treated as the offscouring of 
all things. Luther and his coadjutors were represented as the 
monsters of their times. Those excellent and wonderful men, 
Penn, Fox, Barclay, with the early Friends, suffered every kind 
of reproach, and experienced great tribulation, as infidel emis- 
saries and fanatical disorganizers. Before the abolition of the 
African slave trade, Wilberforce and Clarkson were vehemently 
denounced as interfering with vested rights, and seeking to 
cripple the prosperity of England ; and a murderous attempt 
was made to drown the latter in the river Mersey at Liverpool. 
It is needless to ask how those heroic and unfaltering pioneers 
of our race are now regarded. The mid-day sun shining in the 
fullness of its strength is not brighter, the firm set earth is 
not more solid than their fame ; and down through all coming 
time shall they be hailed by countless processions of new-born 
generations as among the saviors of their race. There will be 
none to distrust their disinterestedness, none to question their 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



257 



sanity, none to scoff at their testimony. * * * In taking 
a retrospect of the past, the present stands ostensibly amazed 
and shocked at the treatment of those glorious old reformers. 
It sees nothing in the sternest language of the prophets to con- 
demn ; it hails Jesus as the true Messiah, and weeps over his 
crucifixion ; it venerates the memories of the apostles and mar- 
tyrs ; it places Luther, Calvin, Penn, in the calendar of saints. 
It mourns that all these were beyond its countenance and succor, 
and takes infinite credit to itself, that it is animated by a far 
higher and nobler spirit. 

All this is spurious virtue and mock piety ; it is a cheap 
mode of being heroic and good, for it costs nothing. * * * 

But let it not be so with us. Let us prove ourselves worthy 
of the great and good who have gone before us. Truth needs 
our help ; let her have it. Right is cloven down in the land ; 
let us come to the rescue. Liberty is hunted with blood-hounds, 
and lynch law is threatened to her advocates ; let us form a 
body-guard around her, and bare our bosom to the shafts that 
are aimed at her. Christianity, as exemplified in the life of its 
great Founder, is tarnished, modified, perverted to the sanc- 
tioning of enormous crimes, to the justification of sinners of the 
first rank ; let us endeavor to remove its stain, to hold it up in 
its pristine purity, as against all wrong, all injustice, all tyranny, 
and embracing all mankind in one common brotherhood. 

Millions of our countrymen are in chains, crying to us for 
deliverance ; on the side of their oppressors there is power ; let 
us rally for their emancipation, and never retire from the con- 
flict until victory or death be ours. The demon spirit of war is 
driving his chariot wheels over the bodies of prostrate thousands, 
and kindling the flames of hell throughout our borders ; let us 
be volunteers in the cause of peace ; and give no countenance 
whatever to the spirit of violence. To do all this, it will cost 
us something • we must think no more of the bubble reputation 
of the hour than did Jesus ; we must have entire faith in God, 
and be baptized into the divine spirit of love ; we must see of 
the travail of our souls, and be satisfied ; we must be strength- 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



ened and consoled by the thought that, in addition to the sweet 
approval of our own consciences, we shall secure the gratitude 
of a redeemed posterity, and the smiles of God. * * * * 

Generally speaking, I care not how highly any one praises 
the dead, or how great may be his professed veneration for 
Luther or Calvin, for Whitefield or Wesley, for David or Moses, 
for Jesus or Paul. As at this day all this is popular, and is 
everywhere well received, it gives me no evidence of any vital 
appreciation of the character of those intrepid reformers, on the 
part of the encomiast. The cowardly and time-serving, the 
hypocritical and pharisaical are always prompt to appear as the 
special champions of all departed canonized worth. * * * 

To every great reform the same objections, substantially, are 
urged until it triumphs. First— That it is against the Scriptures. 
Second — That it disturbs the peace, and endangers the safety 
of the Church. Third — That it is generally discarded by the 
priesthood, who being divinely appointed, must know all about 
it. Fourth — That it is contrary to long-established precedent 
and venerated authority. Fifth — That it lacks respectability 
and character; those who espouse it are generally obscure, 
uninfluential, and none of the rulers believe in it. Sixth — It 
is sheer fanaticism, and its triumph would be the overthrow of 
all order in society, and chaos would come again. Lastly — Its 
advocates are vulgar in speech, irreverent in spirit, personal in 
attack, seeking their own base ends by bad means, and pre- 
sumptuously attempting to dictate to the wise, the learned and 
the powerful. 

Be not intimidated by any of these outcries. They are 
" full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Or rather they 
indicate the standard around which it is your duty and my duty 
to rally ; and that is the standard of right, whether storm or 
sunshine be our portion, or whatever may be the consequences. 

First of all, let us maintain freedom of speech ; let us 
encourage honest and fearless inquiry in all things. Let us 
recognize no higher standard than that of Reason, and dare to 
summon to its bar all books, customs, governments, institutions 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



2 59 



and laws, that we may prove them, and render our verdict 
accordingly. Whatever in this great universe is above our 
reason, with that we need have no controversy, nor should it 
give us any anxiety ; whatever is contrary to our reason, that 
let us promptly reject, though a thousand books deemed sacred 
should declare it to be true — though ten thousand councils 
should affirm it to be right — though all nations should pronounce 
us to be guilty of a terrible heresy in rejecting it. If God does 
not address us as reasonable beings, he cannot address us as 
accountable beings, and hence we are absolved from every 
moral obligation to him ; we take our place with the beasts of 
the field, with the fowls of the air, with stocks and stones. But 
he has created us in his great and glorious image ; and . 

" In our spirit doth His Spirit shine, 
As shines the sunbeam in a drop of dew." 

Thank God, the Past is not the Present. For its oppor- 
tunities and deeds, we are not responsible. It is for us to 
discharge the high duties that devolve on us, and carry our 
race onward. To be no better, no wiser, no greater than the 
Past, is to be little, and foolish and bad ; it is to misapply noble 
means, to sacrifice glorious opportunities for the performance 
of sublime deeds, to become cumberers of the ground. We can 
and must transcend our predecessors in their efforts to give 
peace, joy, liberty to the world. — William Lloyd Garrison. 

The Reformer. 

We may regret that in this stage of the spirit's life, the 
sincere and self-denying worker is not always permitted to 
partake of the fruits of his toil, or receive the honors of a bene- 
factor. We hear his good evil-spoken of, and his noblest 
sacrifices counted as naught, — we see him not only assailed by 
the wicked, but discountenanced and shunned by the timidly 
good, followed on his hot and dusty pathway by the execra- 
tions of the hounding mob, and the contemptuous pity of the 



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worldly-wise and prudent ; and, when at last the horizon of 
Time shuts down between him and ourselves, and the places 
which have known him know him no more forever, we are 
almost ready to say with the regal voluptuary of old : " This 
also is vanity and a great evil ; for what hath a man of all his 
labor and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath labored 
under the sun ?" But is this the end ? Has God's universe 
no wider limits than the circle of the blue wall which shuts in 
our nestling-place ? Has life's infancy only been provided for ; 
and beyond this poor nursery-chamber of Time is there no 
playground for the soul's youth, no broad fields for its manhood ? 
Perchance, could we but lift the curtains of the narrow pin-fold 
wherein we dwell, we might see that our poor friend and brother 
whose fate we have thus deplored has by no means lost the 
reward of his labors, but that in new fields of duty he is 
cheered even by the tardy recognition of the value of his ser- 
vices in the old. The continuity of life is never broken ; the 
river flows onward and is lost to our sight, but under its new 
horizon it carries the same waters which it gathered under ours • 
and its unseen valleys are made glad by the offerings which 
are borne down to them from the Past, flowers, perchance, the 
germs of which its own waves planted on the banks of Time. 
Who shall say that the mournful and repentant love with which 
the benefactors of our race are at length regarded, may not be 
to them in their new condition of being sweet and grateful as 
the perfume of long-forgotten flowers; or that our harvest- 
hymns of rejoicing may not reach the ears of those who in 
weakness and suffering scattered the seeds of blessing? 

Great truths when first told are not always believed, and 
for that very reason are the more needed, for it is evermore the 
case that the right word, when first uttered, is an unpopular 
and denied one. Hence he who undertakes to tread the thorny 
pathway of Reform — who, smitten with the love of truth and 
justice, or indignant in view of wrong, and insolent oppression, 
is rashly inclined to throw himself at once into that great con- 
flict, which the Persian seer not untruly represented as a war 



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between light and darkness — would do well to count the cost. 
To the reformer, in an especial manner, comes home the truth 
that whoso ruleth his own spirit is greater than him who taketh 
a city. Patience, hope, charity, watchfulness unto prayer, how 
needful are all these to success ! Without them he is in danger 
of ingloriously giving up his contest with error and prejudice 
at the first repulse; or, with that spiteful philanthropy which 
we sometimes witness, taking a sick world by the nose, like a 
spoiled child, and endeavoring to force down its throat the long 
rejected nostrums prepared for its relief. 

What then ! Shall we, in view of these things call back 
young and generous spirits, just entering upon the perilous 
pathway ? God forbid ! Welcome, thrice welcome, rather. 
Let them go forward, not unwarned of the danger, nor unre- 
minded of the pleasures which belong to the service of human- 
ity. Great is the consciousness of right. Sweet is the answer 
of a good conscience. He who pays his whole-hearted homage 
to Truth and Duty — who swears his life-long fealty on their 
altars, and rises up a Nazarite consecrated to their holy service — 
is not without his solace and enjoyment, when, to the eyes of 
others, he seems the most lonely and miserable. He breathes 
an atmosphere which the multitude know not of — "a serene 
heaven which they cannot discern rests over him, glorious in 
its purity and stillness. " Nor is he altogether without kindly 
human sympathies. All generous and earnest hearts which are 
brought in contact with his own beat evenly with it. All that 
is good and truthful and lovely in man, whenever and wherever 
it truly recognizes him, must sooner or later acknowledge his 
claim to love and reverence. His faith overcomes all things. 
The future unrolls itself before him, with its waving harvest- 
fields springing up from the seed he is scattering ; and he looks 
forward to the close of life with the calm confidence of one 
who feels that he has not lived idle and useless; but with 
hopeful heart and strong arm has labored with God and nature 
for the Best. 

And not in vain. In the economy of God, no effort, how- 



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ever small, put forth for the right cause, fails of its effect. No 
voice, however feeble, lifted up for Truth, ever dies amidst the 
confused noises of Time. Through discords of Sin and Sor- 
row, Pain, and Wrong, it rises in deathless melody, whose notes 
of wailing are hereafter to be changed to those of triumph, as 
they blend with the Great Harmony of a reconciled universe. 
— J. G. Whittier. 

Forgiveness and Love. 

The doctrines of forgiveness and love, taught by Jesus, are 
not, as men seem to suppose, mere beautiful sentimental the- 
ories, fit only for heaven : they are rational principles, which 
may, not only safely, but profitably, be reduced to practice on 
earth. All divine principles, if suffered to flow out into the 
ultimates of life, would prove the wisest political economy. 

The assertion that society makes its own criminals, inter- 
feres with the theological opinions of some. They argue that 
God leaves the will of man free, und therefore every individual 
is responsible for his own sin. Whether the same action is 
equally a sin in the sight of God, when committed by individ- 
uals in totally different circumstances, I will not attempt to 
discuss. Such questions should reverently be left to Him who 
made the heart, and who alone can judge it. But I feel that 
if I were to commit a crime, with my education, and the social 
influences that prop my weakness in every direction, I should 
be a much worse sinner than a person guilty of the same deed 
whose childhood had been passed among the lowest haunts of 
vice, and whose after years had been unvisited by outward influ- 
ences to purify and refine. The degree of conviction resisted 
would be the measure of my sin. 

The simple fact is, human beings stand between two kinds 
of influences, the inward and the outward. The inward is the 
spirit of God, which strives with us always. The outward is 
the influence of Education, Society, Government, etc. In a 
right state of things, these two would be in perfect harmony ; 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



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but it is painfully obvious that they are now discordant. Society 
should stand to her poor in the relation of a parent, not of a 
master. 

People that are most unwilling to admit that external cir- 
cumstances have an important agency in producing crime, are 
nevertheless extremely careful to place their children under 
safe outward influences. So little do they trust their free will 
to the guidance of Providence, they often fear to have them 
attend schools taught by persons whose creeds they believe to 
be untrue. If governments took equal paternal care, if they 
would spend more money to prevent crime, they need spend 
far less to punish it. — Lydia Maria Child. 

Spiritual Christianity. 

In its first movement in Christian history that Spirit was 
unfettered by creeds, in the modern sense. St. Paul had no 
theology, according to our use of that term, and no literature 
to impose as law for the Church, and as the channel of grace 
in the future of Christendom. 

He struggled with all his fervor to get the idea of a free 
and common communication of the Divine Spirit to all races, 
through a risen head of our humanity, enthroned over the 
whole Christian mind as its only mental creed and bond. What 
we call his theology was mostly his interpretation of the reli- 
gious records and movements of the past — and that for an 
immediate, a temporary and pressing issue. He strove to con- 
vince the Jewish part of the Church that, out of their own 
documents, they were condemned for exclusiveness in denying 
the equal in all nations by the plan of Divine Providence. 
****** 

And the New Testament documents taken together do not 
present any shapen, interlocked, systematical system of Chris- 
tianity to the understanding. They were never intended to fix 
the form, and to enfigure infinite truth for the intellect of a 
church that was to last thousands of years in an advancing 



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civilization. It is very difficult for any scholar, studying the 
facts without prejudice, to make the philosophy of religion by 
St. James coincide with that of St. Paul; or the conceptions 
of the church in the Apocalypse and in Galatians identical. 
We do not get the light of theological science in equal clearness, 
or in harmonious hues, from these fragments of the primitive 
thought of the church. But we do get the spirit through them 
all in uniform intensity. They give us truth of the eternal 
order; heat, and electric currents, and charges from the invisible 
world in equal measures. Of what consequence is it how ade- 
quately or accordantly they convey the perceptions of the 
infinite reason in the mysteries of theology, if they flood us 
with the deeper truth of the infinite essence; if they are bat- 
teries for shedding the "powers of the world to come" on the 
torpid conscience, the disloyal or flaccid will, the corrupt imag" 
ination, the withering heart; if they make us feel the holiness, 
the justice, the unsounded charity of God ; if they restore the 
proportions of things to our moral vision, reducing this world 
to a speck within the soul's world, and curtained from it by a 
film that may break for us to-morrow ? 

Ah, how brutally these marvelous records have been treated 
under our theories of a minute and infallible intellectual inspi- 
ration ! How men have crushed and cut them to make poetry, 
and precept, and vision, and mystic vagueness of utterance, 
and Oriental hyperbole, and hot rhetoric for an emergency, and 
well-weighed judgments, and lyric raptures, fit together like 
the puzzle-maps of wood with which children play, into an out- 
lined map of eternal wisdom, consistent and complete ! 

It is not more reverent and wise to look at those chapters 
of fragmentary scrolls of an inspiration that breathed the Jorces, 
and not the science of the Infinite into the first generations of 
Christendom ? Shall we not thus see them set around with 
the pure splendor of the Spirit, deeply tinged with different 
human temperaments, as types of the diverse genius which the 
gospel has sanctified in history ? * * * 

And we have a right to say now, in the interest of vital 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



265 



Christianity, that all theories of Christ rank and office, and 
all catechisms and creeds, are indifferent to the Spirit, so 
far as they belong to the speculative science of the Infi- 
nite, or to the philosophical interpretation of the Scripture. 
This is the great question : how near is the man to the Spirit 
of God? how closely does the Christ he believes in bring 
him to the Infinite ? how richly does he interpret to him the 
character of the Almighty — his equity, his providence, his love? 
It is working truth, truth for redemption, truth that cleanses 
the passions, burns the clouded conscience, wrenches the cow- 
ardly will, and knocks at the heart with a sweet and serious 
pleading, in which the Spirit hides. A notional Trinity or a 
notional Unity it cares not for any more than it cares for your 
conception of how many strata are in the surface of the globe, 
or how the sun's light is connected with its substance. * * 

Is it the spiritual truth which looks through the creed that 
is the all-important element so far as the person is concerned. 
St. Paul determined to know no other formula than the Cross 
of Christ. But what did it mean to him? We have seen that 
it meant the breaking out of divine love toward all mankind ; 
it meant the equal spiritual rights of all races ; it meant a 
perfect moral providence , it meant the condemnation of Phar- 
isaism as high treason to humanity; it meant the abolition of 
all covenant-grace ; it meant that humility, charity, self-sacrifice 
is the law of the moral universe ; it meant that men need no 
more pine here as prisoners, but could burst through faith "into 
the air of that supernatural life which God lives eternally. " In 
a word, it meant just the opposite of the system into which the 
old school Calvanism has petrified the book of Romans. 

The Cross of Christ is thus preached now, in the Trinita- 
rian Church, by men like Bushnell, and Kingsley, and Maurice, 
and Robertson, and Stanley, and is interpreted thus by theolo_ 
gians like Jowett, and scholars like Bunsen ; and it is the sign 
of the purest faith and most adequate conception of Chris- 
tianity in our time. * * * 

It is the amount of quickening truth which our creed is 
17 



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translucent that keeps us — just as it is the sweetness and depth 
of saintly beauty, and not the literal, historic or positive verity 
of the person or the scene that moves us in one of Raphael's 
groups. * * * 

I do not argue that truth of creed is unimportant. I do 
not say that a systematical and pure theology, an adequate 
intellectual interpretation of the office of Christ and the mean- 
ing of Christianity, is not a most desirable thing. But I say 
that unless a man values and uses his Christ or his creed as a 
medium of the Spirit, as a lense to condense the radiance of 
the everlasting world upon his soul, a perfect surface-belief is 
of no account. * * * 

Let us pray that we may yield our mind and will to the 
Spirit ; that by its light we may see through our creeds into the 
all-important verities of the substantial world ; that we maybe 
instruments of Christian music, more than soldiers of Calvanistic 
or Unitarian camps ; and that we may be lifted at last, by that 
Spirit, to that world where we shall experience the truth, that 
"whether there be prophecies they shall fail ; whether there be 
tongues they shall cease ; whether there be knowledge it shall 
vanish away" before the charity that " never faileth," which 
gives the "unity of the Spirit," and is "the fulfilling of the 
law." — T. Starr King. 



A Lesson From Nature. 

Now I have one tree just by my study window, with which I 
have managed to become very intimate. We nod to each other 
every morning. In the long black days (just before spring), I 
could see my friend was looking disheartened enough. 

It had great treasures of buds ; but it seemed to fold thern as 
a child folds a treasure in its clasped fingers, and all the while 
to be saying, "Well, I do think this spring will never come." 
But, I said, " Hold on, good tree, spring is surely coming. I 
saw her down on the Alabama line. Here is the winter — fierce, 
persistent and determined to stay, Yonder, where I have been, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



267 



is the spring — soft, sunny, filling the woods with her white 
splendor; and I can see the ( blossoms pouring up this way, 
faster than I can run on my feet to tell you." And it was so. 
The warm days came at last ; summer was victor ; and my tree 
stood, tremulous in her beautiful green leaves, like a bride 
adorned for her wedding. 

Why will not men take these things into their hearts, and 
be as full of faith in the meaning and purpose of their lives as 
of their flowers ? Is man alone the neglected step-child ? Are 
his fortunes alone misfortunes ? Are we much worse than the 
lilies ? Or is it not of all things true, that as man rises nearest 
of all on this earth to the image of the Infinite, so he is nearest 
of all on earth to the Providence that enfolds and blesses all ? 
— Robert Colly er. 



Inspiration Present and Universal. 

The Old dies that the New may sing of birth, maturity and 
victory. The Past, with its lengthened shadows, its defeats and 
triumphs, was well ; so were frightful explosions in the old Plu- 
tonian period. Fossils in Silurian rocks are significant, as 
treasured histories of primeval life bespeaking higher organized 
existence. * * * 

Parchments are fixtures. While neither constitutions nor 
creeds grow, souls do. As well strive to fill our arteries with the 
blood of Jewish patriarchs and priests, as to appropriate their 
thoughts, commandments or religious experiences, forgetful of 
the living present, hoping thereby to have our spiritual life 
vitalized. The yesterdays are gone, let them go ! The good 
of the Past preserved and reconstructed, Americans have to 
do with the to-days, and with a brightening Future whose crown- 
ing glories should be harmonial men and women, being laws 
unto themselves. * * * 

All those brave souls of the Past were helps, not masters 
or infallible guides. Wisdom did not die with them, and they 
must not talk to us authoritatively. Each should be his own 



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authority. God speaks to us as frequently and as fatherly as he 
did to Jewish seers. Seeing in every valley a Jordan, in every 
sectarian church a Dead Sea, in every aspirational heart a temple 
of worship, in every woodland eminence a mount of ascension, 
and in every child an embryo angel, what special need of 
Hebrew bounty styled "Revelation?" Inspiration is every- 
where an in-breathing from the Infinite. — J. M. Peebles. 

Godliness of Labor. 

Why is it such a fatal thing when a country has men who 
throw discredit on labor? Wherever a theory prevails that 
work is degrading, great mischief ensues ; not because a false 
ambition withdraws needful hands from employment, for there 
are many kinds of work that demand diversities of gifts. If a 
man lay down one tool to take up another, he may still be 
faithful to the commonwealth. And it is not because men work 
badly who work under the contempt of their fellows — although 
there is no labor so ill done as that which is meanly requited — 
but some kind of necessity, hunger, the climate, or the whip, 
will compel men to work in spite of human scorn ; and the 
work will correspond with the necessity. In degrading labor, 
the mischief is done to mankind by degrading Providence — it 
is a practical infidelity to the great idea that God is a Creator. 
See how it operates. Work runs through the universe ; it is 
the condition of permanence and growth. Mankind is not 
retarded so much by inefficiency as by the arrogance that will 
not imitate God, for a certain per cent of inefficiency must 
always accompany so many births, being only another accident 
of malformation. But God, in prosecuting his divine schemes, 
allows for inefficiency, but not for infidelity ; not for the arro- 
gance that calls it an honor to do nothing. When one variety 
of work is thought degrading, all work becomes impaired. 

It is a revolt of the whole working organization against the 
order of the world. Intellect itself is betrayed when it is 
anxious to make it appear that no vulgar labors occupy it. It 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



269 



is trying to separate itself from the natural religion of mankind, 
and to pass off for something better than a laborer. 

What intellect God puts into the strokes of every day, as 
he thinks it not degrading to have his petroleum ready for the 
tap, his veins of coal and granite ready for the blaster's drill, 
his oak rimmed for keelsons with the hardness of a thousand 
years ! He puts slag into his iron, quartz into his gold, wild- 
ness and peril into his whales, and rejoices to provoke our 
honest labor. There is not a stroke made by pen or pickaxe, 
that is not in answer to the mind of God. He holds the most 
precious things beyond our arm's length — gems, gold, beauty ; 
he worketh hitherto to make them, and we must work to win 
them— diamonds in the river channels, pearls in dusky Indian 
seas, liberty in every acre of the soil. How long His mind 
must brood before he can bring forests to lignite, and lignite to 
coal ; before carbon will bleach and whiten into the Koh-i-nor, 
before the soil of a republic can be transmuted into the rights 
of man ! 

This is all the industry of God, who knows that idleness is 
chaos, and an idle man the soul's disorganizer. * * * * 

No privilege is high enough to look down on God's imag- 
ination ; for having once conceived his own right mind, he 
devotes eternity to Virtue and the Rights of Man. — John Weiss, 

Free Religion and the Free State. 

What are the safeguards of a Free State? Intelligence 
surely is one. But as that advances, it gives the individual 
mind the consciousness of its own dignity, its command of 
natural law, its freedom, its direct access to truth, its right to 
apply the same universal principles to all persons, races, reli- 
gions. But intelligent mind alone cannot save a State; or 
Greece had not fallen. There is a little European State which 
has passed through the intestine strifes of petty cantons in 
which Greece perished, and come out united and free. Swit- 
zerland has large practical intelligence : her schools are the 



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models of this century ; her education of the masses leaves 
England and France a hundred years in the background. She 
has another element of stability, behind intelligence, — namely, 
strength of moral conviction. Now Switzerland is intensely 
religious. These cantonal wars have not been like the Greek, 
political, so much as religious ; very often pure wars of sect. 
There is no country where the hostilities of creeds have been 
so inveterate. The Jew was, until very recently, under heavier 
disabilities in some parts of Switzerland than in any other 
enlightened country. Yet such is the moral energy of that 
people, their sense of justice, their devotion to liberty, that they 
have put the intensest religious antagonisms underfoot, and are 
most united by disparagement of mere dogma in the interest of 
practical duty. The little mountain fastness has been the 
refuge of free thought for all Europe. It has had to yield now 
and then a little, as recently in complying so far with the 
demands of a powerful neighbor as to withdraw Mazzini, the 
religious and political radical, from its Italian borders ; but it 
is only to hold him closer to its own bosom. Switzerland is 
saved only by reverence for liberty. Her mountains , are at 
once symbol and guardian of a Free Religious Faith. 

America is trying a more radical and a broader experiment 
than Switzerland. We are blending the antagonisms of all 
races and the diversities of all faiths. We are giving equal 
powers to the best and the worst, to the wisest and the most 
ignorant, among the tribes of men. The busy, peaceful hordes 
of Asia re-enforce us from the West ; the scum of Europe 
floats over to us from the East ; the barbarous poor white, and 
his perhaps more barbarous social master, are more than half 
our South ; the very Esquimaux peep in upon our North. And, 
to meet these multifold demands, we have summoned the free 
thought and faith, the latest science of the world. We have a 
new continent, new liberties, new inspirations. Do we imagine 
that out of these combinations there shall not come creative 
experience such as never came before since the world was 
made, not even in that analogous grand concourse of races and 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



271 



beliefs in the Roman Empire, out of which Christianity first 
emerged? Our national experiment, covering the race, demands 
the universal religion that shall spring from the fusion of all 
experiences and all gifts. Not the blood of all races only is 
now to be mixed : but the very day is new ; the day of mind, 
of heart, of sun and soil. The free self-governing tribes, face 
to face with nature, alive with scientific ardor, conscious of 
unparalleled opportunity, of a spiritual vision peculiar to the 
hour, are no subjects for the old-world faith in a prescribed his- 
torical centre. 

Let the free State make free religion ; the nation of nations 
stand open to the coming God, whom the exclusive revelations 
could not reveal. Stand, each in the spiritual freedom that is 
open eye and ear, for the practical and intellectual service that 
shall further others, and soul and State alike are saved. 

It is not possible to make citizenship a dependency on the 
Messiah. The Constitution wants no name to swear by, con- 
cedes to no one religion the sole right to guarantee the Infinite 
Care. And the whole stress of the time is towards the liberty 
thus outwardly conditioned. There is something in the very 
air that assures us. The common sense and practical intelli- 
gence of men and women responds to every hint that the old 
ecclesiastical bondage is but varnish and veneer. The track 
of American destiny may yet be stormy and perilous; but 
the Idea that makes our social and political civilization is 
making our religious faith. Human nature, not exceptional 
persons ; principles before precedents ; direct access of each 
to the light, not approach through title or grace of another ; 
common duties, not exclusive rights; no hierarchies nor 
lordships, but natural citizenship the highest dignity, to which 
all exaltation returns, — it is one and the same key that unlocks 
the great questions, both in law and in faith. The same 
instinct that lifts the negro to political manhood, and makes 
democracy a success, refers Jesus to his own spiritual manhood, 
and vindicates religious freedom. — Samuel Johnson. 



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Culture Demanded by Modern Life* 

The mind of our age is confronted with a host of urgent 
questions, such as the Perils of Misgovernment, the Limits of 
Legislation, the Management of Criminals, of the Insane, 
the Congenitally Defective, and the Pauper Class ; the opera- 
tion of Charities, the Philosophy of Philanthropy, the Relations 
of Sex and Race, International Ethics, the Freedom of Trade, 
the Rights of Industry, Property in Ideas, Public Hygiene, 
Primary Education, Religious Liberty, the Rights of Invention, 
Political Representation, and many others, which inosculate 
and interfuse into the great total of practical inquiry which 
challenges the intellect of our times ; and it is this which the 
classical scholar evades, when he shrinks from the present and 
retires into the past. And well he may ; for the mastery of 
the languages and literatures of Greece and Rome, and culture 
in unprogressive studies, furnish neither suitable ideas nor 
mental habits for this kind of work. 

Science, grounding itself in the order and truth of nature, 
armed with the appropriate knowledge, and inspired with the 
hope of a better future, to which it sees all things tending, 
enters the great field, as properly its own, and will train its 
votaries to that breadth of view, that robust boldness of treat- 
ment, and that patient and dispassionate temper which immi- 
nent questions of the times so decisively demand. 

In his late instructive lecture on the " Development of Ideas 
in Physical Science," Professor Leibig shows that it has been 
a slow organic growth, depending upon deeper conditions than 
the mere favor or opposition of Church or State. He shows 
that in Greece the progress of science was arrested by its slave- 
system, points out the necessity of abounding wealth to give 
leisure for thought and culture, and the importance of these 
social conditions which bring into intimate intercourse all 
classes of thinkers and workers, upon the mutual co-operation 
of which the advance of science and of society depends. He 
says : " Freedom, that is the absence of all restrictions which 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



273 



can preyent men from using to their advantage the powers 
which God has given them, is the mightiest of all the condi- 
tions of progress in civilization and culture ;" and adds that 
" it can hardly be doubted that among the peoples of the North 
American Free States all the conditions exist for their devel- 
opment to the highest point of culture and civilization 
attainable by man. " 

These are weighty considerations for the educators of this 
country. Institutions are but expressions of ideas and habits; 
and the European policy, governmental and ecclesiastical, is 
grounded upon a culture suited to its necessities, and which 
has grown up with it in the course of ages. Both idolize the 
past; both worship precedent, and authority, and both dread 
independent inquiry into first principles; one recoils from 
Freedom as the other from Science. Freedom and Science, on 
the other hand, have had a coeval destiny; have suffered 
together and grown together. Both break from proscription 
and throw themselves upon Nature, and the watchword of 
both is Progress, which consists not in rejecting the past, but 
in subordinating and outgrowing it, in assimilating and reorgan- 
izing its truth, and leaving behind its obsolete forms. In the 
last century we threw off the trammels of the repressive system, 
and entered upon the experiment of Free Institutions ; but it 
avails little to shift the external forms, if the old ideas are not 
replaced by new growths of thought and feeling. — E, L. You* 
mans. 

The Thinking Machine. 

Men admire the steam engine of Watt, and the calculating 
engine of Babbage ; but how little do they care for the think- 
ing engine of the Infinite Artificer ! They venerate days and 
dogmas, and ceremonials ; but where is the reverence that is 
due to the most sacred of the things of time, the organism of 
the soul ? We speak of the glories of the stellar universe ; but 
is not the miniature duplicate of that universe in the living 
brain a more transcendent marvel? We admire the vast 



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fabric of society and government, and that complicated scheme 
of duties, responsibilities, usages and laws which constitute 
order ; but how few remember that all this has its deep foun- 
dation in the measured march of cerebral transformations. 
We point to the inventions, arts, sciences and literatures 
which form the swelling tide of civilization ; but were they 
not all originated in that laboratory of wonders, the human 
brain ? Geological revelations carry us back through durations 
so boundless that imagination is bewildered, and reason reels 
under the grandeur of the demonstration; but through the 
measureless series of advancing periods, we discover a stupen- 
dous plan. Infinite Power, working through infinite time, 
converges the mighty lines of causality to the fulfillment of an 
eternal design, — the birth of an intellectual and moral era 
through the development of the brain of man, which thus 
appears as the final term of an unfolding world. * * 

The scientific method of studying human nature, important 
as may be its relation to the management of the insane and 
feeble-minded, and valuable as is its service in establishing the 
limits of mental effort, must find its fullest application to the 
broad subject of education. * * • A knowledge of the being 
to be trained, as it is the basis of all intelligent culture, must 
be the first necessity of the teacher. -E. L. Youmans. 

Growth and Self-Sacrifice. 

There is a perpetual circle of beneficent change — of disso- 
lution and reproduction. Such is the work of the year from 
summer to winter, from seed-time to harvest. Such is the rev- 
olution of ages and cyles of being. Descend into the recesses 
of the earth, into those immense catacombs where huge mon- 
sters lie packed away, each in its strong sarcophagus, like dead 
barbaric kings, with the wrecks of their dynasties around 
them. 

There, in original fossil forms, behold the seeds of human 
civilization, and admire the process through which these things 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



275 



enriched the great economy by their death more than by their 
life. And thus it is everywhere. Loss, defeat, sacrifice, are 
the terms of reward and obedience, of growth and advancement 

But the law of the natural (or material) is in this respect the 
law of the moral world. Let me then ask you to consider 
especially this process of growth and adornment as it appears 
in human affairs; in history and individual experience. 
" Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it 
abideth alone ; but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit." See 
how the inmost principle of this fact appears in human action 
and the discipline of character. 

Is it not true that increase of good, not only for others, but 
for ourselves, comes exactly in proportion as we extirpate 
selfishness ? In this element, whi<?h, of course, I refer to in its 
mean and bad sense, all sin has its own roots ; while on the 
other hand all virtue, all religious life, springs up in the denial 
of it, and the victory over it. Except man loves something, 
and lives for something besides himself, he does indeed "abide 
alone ; " and his life is barren. He has wealth of blessedness 
and imparts none to others. 

To be alone one need not go into a desert or a solitary 
chamber. The most gloomy, impenetrable loneliness is isola- 
tion of soul, is to live in a crowd without one pulse of sympathy 
or one reciprocal nerve. How lonely is a great city to such a 
man. Sometimes men are in such a position through no fault, 
but often through some inherent and haunting vice. And in 
this miserable sense the selfish man is alone. * * * 

On the other hand, as we let narrow self-regard fall into the 
ground and die, as starting from the basis of lawful self-appre- 
ciation we go forward to help and bless others, and become 
part of the living world around us, not only does there spring 
up additional fruitage of good for humanity at large, but we, 
too, are made richer. A man feels that not only has he 
helped others, but that into himself has passed a joy and a 
power that abide forever. 

Thus, in proportion as our action is broad and human, we 



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never die. We become identified with mankind at large, and 
are incorporated with all past efforts of nobleness and benefi- 
cence. Thus we go forth in the boundless light and free air of 
coming ages. 

See how good and true men have lived in all ages and 
lands. Whose names are repeated from heart to heart and 
from lip to lip ? Whose names stir the fresh blood of Liberty 
and the pulses of Virtue ? Men in whom the contracted 
kernel of self has died ! Others who have won a selfish 
glory, and cut a sword-path to fame, may linger for a time to 
blaze and astonish. 

But these alone stand serene and beautiful, like stars, to 
attract the world's admiration and sway its best influences for- 
ever. It has well been said by another, " No great benefit, no 
extensive emancipation, whether from mental slavery, from 
political bondage, or from social evil, is ever wrought by 
humanity, unless the benevolent heart that undertakes the 
task has the strength of self-sacrifice and is content to lay its 
account with long-continued endurance and bitter agony. It 
is to such that the thoughts turn. When politicians express 
their allegiance to the cause of freedom, they pledge the mem- 
ories of those who died on the field or on the scaffold. When 
the energies of nations awake, their minds first turn, not to 
those who have conquered, but to those who have fallen." 

But the more closely the cause is connected with the spir- 
itual, which is the permanent welfare of men, the more noble 
is the sacrifice made in its behalf, even to the wondrous death 
on the Cross. * * * 

It is only to an limited and faithless eyesight that any 
righteous cause falling into the ground seems to perish. Scaf- 
folds, despotisms, ruinous battle-fields — these are all conditions 
of the harvest. Truth, or justice, or liberty, swathe it with 
parchment cerements ; dig its grave with bayonets ; press it 
down with thorns, bastiles or slave-blocks ; sprinkle it all over 
with the venerable dust of despotism, and in that dust trace 
the lines of its epitaph. It may be buried, but has it perished? 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



277 



Can you bury the spirit of Christ ? The earth rolls, the sun 
shines, the spring-winds blow, God's truth flows into the soul 
of men, and not a kernel of the righteous seed will fail to ripen 
at the last. 

" God is patient for He is eternal. " Let us not be dis- 
mayed in any private or public trial of this life, because our 
short reeds of measurement cannot mark out His great plan. 

"Verily I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into 
the ground and die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, it bringeth 
forth much fruit. " What a sublime law and process does this 
proclaim ! What vast consolation does it unfold ! How pregnant 
with the inspiration of hope for ourselves and for the world ! 
How calmly may we take up this truth and cling to it ! 
Take it up and cling to it — in our trial for trust ; in our action 
for effort; and in our survey of the general movement of things, 
for the indication of our faith in a just and beneficent, and 
advancing scheme of Providence. — E. H. Chafiin. 

Spiritual Views. 

Spiritualists do not allege, or believe, that any of the phe- 
nomena in which- they find proofs of immortality are miraculous. 
They believe in the universality of Law. They do not regard 
the signs and wonders that came to light in Jesus' day, as excep- 
tions to natural law, but as phenomena which occurred under 
laws ever in force, but with which we are imperfectly acquainted. 
They see reproduced under their eyes modern types of most 
of these signs and wonders, and they find in such reproduc- 
tion one of the strongest arguments to sustain the truth of the 
New Testament narative. 

The general truth which is, after all, the essential ; not each 
separate detail. Intelligent Spiritualists reject the doctrine of 
infallibility. They have no belief in plenary inspiration. They 
accept the advice of one of the Oxford Essayists, Dr. Temple, 
Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen of Great Britain, when, 
speaking of two great volumes which he ascribed to the same 



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author — the book of Nature and the book of Revelation — he 
said that if discrepancy appear between them it behooved us 
to consider, in the first place, whether we had not incorrectly 
interpreted the phenomena, and, in the second, whether the 
message might not have come to us perverted through the 
messenger. This is what orthodoxy must have to come to, if 
she would save the essentials of her creed. 

But Spiritualists go a step further. They hold that a spir- 
itual message itself may be an error, and that of this we must 
judge, reverently yet freely, as by our reason we test any earthly 
allegation, let it come from a source however accredited. This 
conviction is derived from another item in the Spiritual creed. 

We believe that there are the same varieties of character in 
the next world as in this. We believe that when we cast off the 
natural body there is, indeed, a potent change from the lower 
to the higher, yet no instantaneous transformation of the soul; 
no apotheosis of some, and degradation to demon-life of others. 
When death calls, he neither deprives us of the virtues, nor 
suddenly relieves us of the vices, of which he finds us pos- 
sessed. Both go with us. The moral, social and intellectual 
qualities which may have distinguished us in this world, will be 
ours in another, there constituting our identity and deciding 
our position. So also of the evil. That dark vestment of sin 
with which, in a man's journey through life, he may have 
become endued, clings to him through the death-change, close 
as the tunic of Nessus. He too retains his identity ; his earthly 
short-comings determine his spiritual state. 

We believe, then, that the spirit of man passes the ordeal 
without other metamorphosis than that which its release from 
the fleshy envelope and its acquisition of clearer perceptions 
effect : a great gainer, too, by this, that through the agency of 
the spiritual senses there is opened up a wider and more lumin- 
ous horoscope ; and thus drawn closer to the great Source of 
Wisdom ; yet essentially the same spirit still. It changes, even 
as now it does, by the intervention of motive presented, by 
the agency of will, by the influence of surroundings better and 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



279 



nobler than those of earth. It changes^ as it changed here, by- 
its own aspirations. It inhabits a world of progress still ; a 
world of active effort, not of passive beatitudes, nor yet of irre- 
vocable doom. 

We believe that the Christian world has been, and still is, 
blighted with false conceptions of Death. Men robe them- 
selves in black when he appears; mourners go about the 
streets. The great punishment, the evil of evils, the primeval 
curse, declared to have been entailed on man by Adam's fall, 
is held to be that summons which calls him hence. Yet, under 
Omniscient Goodness, nothing so universal, so inevitable as 
death, ever was, or ever can be, essentially evil. — Robert Dale 
Owen. 

Ministration of Departed Spirits. 

While every year is taking one and another from the ranks 
of life and usefulness, or the charmed circle of friendship and 
love, it is soothing to remember that the spiritual world is gain- 
ing in riches through the poverty of this. 

In early life, with our friends all around us — hearing their 
voices, cheered by their smiles, — death and the spiritual world 
are to us remote, misty, and half fabulous ; but as we advance 
in our journey, and voice after voice is hushed, and form after 
form vanishes from our side, and our shadow falls almost soli- 
tary on the hillside of life, the soul, by a necessity of its being, 
tends to the unseen and spiritual, and pursues in another life 
those it seeks in vain in this. For with every friend that dies, 
dies also some peculiar form of social enjoyment, whose being 
depended on the peculiar character of that friend; till, late in 
the afternoon of life, the pilgrim seems to himself to have 
passed over to the unseen world, in successive portions, half 
his own spirit : and poor indeed is he who has not familiarized 
himself with that tmknown, whither, despite himself, his soul is 
earnestly tending. One of the deepest and most imperative 
cravings of the human heart, as it follows its beloved ones 
beyond the veil, is for some assurance that they still love and 



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care for us. Could we firmly believe this, bereavement would 
lose half its bitterness. As a German writer beautifully 
expresses it, " Our friend is not wholly gone from us : we see 
across the river of death, in the blue distance, the smoke of his 
cottage : " hence the heart, always creating what it desires, has 
ever made the guardianship and ministration of departed 
spirits a favorite theme of poetic fiction. 

But is it, then, fiction ? Does revelation, which gives so 
many hopes which nature had not, give none here ? Is there 
no sober certainty to correspond to the inborn and passionate 
cravings of the soul ? Do departed spirits in verity retain any 
knowledge of what transpires in this world, and take any part 
in its scenes ? 

All that revelation says of a spiritual state is more intima- 
tion than assertion; it has no distinct treatise, and teaches 
nothing, apparently, of set purpose, but gives vague glorious 
images, while now and then some accidental ray of intelligence 
looks out, 

" Like eyes of cherubs shining 
From out the veil that hid the ark." 

But ou tof all the different hints and assertions of the Bible, 
we think a better inferential argument might be construc- 
ted to prove the ministrations of departed spirits, than for 
many a doctrine which has passed in its day for the height of 
orthodoxy. 

First, then, the Bible distinctly says that there is a class of 
invisible spirits who minister to the children of men. " Are 
they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister to those 
who shall be heirs of salvation ? " It is said of little children, 
that "their angels do always behold the face of the Father 
which is in heaven." This last passage, from the words of our 
Saviour, taken in connection with the well-known tradition of 
his time, fully recognizes the idea of individual guardian 
spirits. 

For God's government over minds is, it seems, throughout, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



28l 



one of intermediate agencies ; and these not chosen at random, 
but with the nicest reference to their adaptation to the purpose 
intended. ****** 

Is it likely, then, that, in selecting subordinate agencies, 
this, so necessary a requisite of a human life and experience, 
is overlooked? While around the throne of God stand 
spirits, now sainted and glorified, yet thrillingly conscious of a 
past experience of sin and sorrow, and trembling to the soul in 
sympathy with temptations and struggles like their own, is it 
likely that he would pass by these souls, thus burning for the 
work, and commit it to those bright abstract spirits whose 
knowledge and experience are comparatively so distant and so 
cold? 

It is strongly in confirmation of this idea, that in the trans- 
figuration scene, which seems to have been intended purposely 
to give the disciples a glimpse of the glorified state of their 
Master, we find Him attended by two spirits of earth, Moses 
and Elias, "which appeared to Him in glory, and spake of His 
death which He should accomplish at Jerusalem." 

It appears that these so long departed ones were still 
mingling in deep sympathy with the tide of human affairs, not 
only aware of the present, but also informed of the future. 

What then? May we look among the band of ministering 
spirits for our own departed ones? Whom would God be 
more likely to send us? Have we in heaven a friend who 
knew us to the heart's core, — a friend to whom we have 
unfolded our soul in its most secret recesses; to whom we 
have confessed our weaknesses, and deplored our griefs ? If 
we are to have a ministering spirit, who better adapted ? 

Have we not memories which correspond to such a belief? 
When our soul has been cast down, has never an invisible 
voice whispered, "There is lifting up?" Have not gales and 
breezes of sweet and healing thought been wafted over us, as 
if an angel had shaken from his wings the odors of paradise ? 
Many a one, we are confident, can remember such things ; and 
whence come they ? 
18 



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Why do the children of a pious mother, whose grave has 
grown green and smooth with years, seem often to walk 
through perils and dangers fearful and imminent as the crossing 
Mohammed's fiery gulf on the edge of a drawn sword, yet 
walk unhurt ? Ah ! could we see that glorious form, that face 
where the angel conceals not the mother, our question would 
be answered. 

It may be possible that a friend is sometimes taken because 
the divine One sees that his ministry can act upon us more 
powerfully from the unseen world than amid the infirmities of 
mortal intercourse. 

Here the soul, distracted and hemmed in by human events 
and by bodily infirmities, often scarce knows itself, and makes 
no impression on others correspondent to its desires. The 
mother would fain electrify the heart of her child. She yearns 
and burns in vain to make her soul effective on its soul, and to 
inspire it with a spiritual and holy life ; but all her own weak- 
ness, faults, and mortal cares, cramp and confine her, till death 
breaks all fetters : and then, first truly alive, risen, purified, and 
at rest, she may do calmly, sweetly, and certainly, what, amid 
the tempest and tossings of life, she labored for painfully and 
fitfully. 

So, also, to generous souls who burn for the good of man, 
who deplore the shortness of life, and the little that is permitted 
to any individual agency in this life, does this belief open a 
heavenly field. Think not, father or brother long laboring for 
man, till thy sun stands on the western mountains, — think not 
that thy day in this world is over. Perhaps, like Jesus, thou 
hast lived a human life, and gained a human experience, to 
become, under and like him, a saviour of thousands. Thou 
hast been through the preparation ; but thy real work of good, 
thy full power of doing, is yet to begin. 

There are some spirits (and those of earth's choicest) to 
whom, so far as enjoyment to themselves or others is con- 
cerned, this life seems to have been a total failure. A hard 
hand from the first, and all the way through life, seems to have 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



283 



been laid upon them : they seem to live only to be chastened 
and crushed ; and we lay them in the grave at last in solemn 
silence. To such, what a vision is opened by this belief! This 
hard discipline has been the school and task-work by which 
their soul has been fitted for their invisible labors in a future 
life ; and when they pass the gates of the grave, their course 
of benevolent acting first begins, and they find themselves 
delighted possessors of what through many years they have 
sighed for, — the power of doing good. 

The year just passed, like all other years, has taken from a 
thousand circles the sainted, the just, and the beloved ; there 
are spots in a thousand graveyards, which have become this 
year dearer than all the living world : but in the loneliness of 
sorrow, how cheering to think that our lost ones are not wholly 
gone from us ! They still may move about in our homes, 
shedding around them an atmosphere of purity and peace, 
promptings of good, and reproofs of evil : we are compassed 
about with a cloud of witnesses, whose hearts throb in sym- 
pathy with every effort and struggle, and who thrill with joy at 
every success. How should this thought check and rebuke 
every worldly feeling and unworthy purpose, and enshrine us, 
in the midst of a forgetful and unspiritual world, with an 
atmosphere of heavenly peace ! They have overcome, have 
risen, are crowned, glorified ; but still they remain to us, our 
assistants, our comforters ; and in every hour of darkness 
their voice speaks to us : " So we grieved, so we struggled, so 
we fainted, so we doubted; but we have overcome, we have 
obtained, we have seen and found all true ; and in our heaven 
behold the certainty of thy own. " — Harriett Beecher Stowe. 



Future Life Near and Real. 

I confess to you there is something in my mind of sublimity 
in the idea that the world is full of spirits, good and evil, and 
the little we can see with these bat's eyas of ours, the little we 
can decipher with these imperfect senses, is not the whole of 



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the reading of those vast pages of that great volume which 
God has written. * * * Doubtless there are vulgar spirits. 
* * On the other hand, I believe there are angels of light, 
spirits of the blessed, ministers of God. I believe not only 
that they are our natural guardians and friends, and teachers, 
and influencers, but that they are the natural antagonists of 
evil spirits. In other words, I believe that the great realm of 
life goes on without the body, very much as it does with the 
body. And as here the mother not only is the guardian of 
her children whom she loves, but foresees that bad associates 
and evil influences threaten them, and draws them back and 
shields them from impending danger; so ministering spirits 
not only minister to us the divinest tendencies, the purest 
tastes, the noblest thoughts and feelings, but, perceiving our 
adversaries, caution us against them, assail them, and drive 
them from us. * * * * 

Out of the dust and the dim, and mists and observations 
of life, there come moments when God permits us to see, in a 
second, farther, wider, and easier, than by ordinary methods 
of logic we can see in a whole life. Do I undervalue logic 
when I say it is inferior to intuition? Intuition at a while heat 
teaches a man in a single moment more than logic ever teaches 
him. Logic constructs the walls of thought, throws up ram- 
parts, and lays out highways; but it never discovers. The 
discovering power is intuition. There are certain times when 
parts of the mind lift themselves up with a kind of celestial 
preparation, and we see and think and feel more in a single 
hour than ordinarily in a year. However useful and needful 
reasoning may be as compared with these sudden insights, it 
is scarcely to be mentioned with respect. 

Ordinarily we are under the influence of things which are 
seen, and of the senses; but now and then, we know not how, 
we rise into an atmosphere in which Spirit-life, God, Christ, the 
ransomed throng in heaven, virtue, truth, faith and love, 
become more significant to us, and seem to rest down upon us 
witb more force than the very things which our physcal senses 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



285 



recognize. There have been times in which, I declare to you, 
heaven was more real than earth ; in which my children that 
were gone spoke more plainly to me than my children that 
were with me ; in which the blessed estate of the just man 
in heaven seemed more real and near to me than the estate of 
any just man upon earth. 

There are experiences that link one with another and higher 
life. — Henry Ward Beecher. 

How Ideas get Spoken — Reformers. 

There is this singular peculiarity about the men who first 
receive ideas, — they cannot keep them. When the rising sun 
gilded the face of the Egyptian Memnon he answered the light 
with songs ; so, when the light of truth gilds our mental hori- 
zon, we cry out at the beautiful vision. No sooner does the 
man perceive that he has a new idea, than he becomes 
impressed that he has a mission. It is not egotism ; it is not a 
desire for notoriety. The same power which gave him the idea 
filled him with an irresistible impulse to reveal it. He cannot 
concesd it ; he rushes forth to light the lamp of his neighbors. 
He cannot be diverted. Wealth, ease, comfort, home, wife, 
children, friends, the gentle amenities of life, may plead ; and 
poverty, disgrace, ruin, and martyrdom with rod, fire, and dun- 
geon may menace, — he rushes on to promulgate the idea. He 
has gained an insight into the everlasting, the inscrutable ; and 
his lips glow with the words with which he sets it forth. He 
controlled by the soft pleasures of this life ? They are ephem- 
eral. He proselyted ? Never. In him an idea, for the first 
time since creation, has found a tongue of flame. It is no fault 
of his that he becomes fanatical, and overestimates the impor- 
tance of his treasure. The world gains by the equilibrium 
resulting from a thousand such. Stand aloof, men of the world, 
who cannot understand a^thing unless it is set down in dol- 
lars and cents, quarts and bushels. Stand aside ! you are the 
dead freight which such fanatics are to carry through ; and the 



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only possible use you serve is a retarding influence which, out 
of kindness, we call conservatism, by which you keep them in 
sight. * * * * 

The world to-day has outgrown its yesterday's thoughts. 
Each year adds growth to the moral and intellectual world, as 
the circling sun adds a new layer to the tree. Each year's 
growth encircles all others ; or in other words, the ideas of the 
race are higher, its attainments more noble, and it basks in a 
brighter light. Each year adds to the moral and intellectual 
temperature of mind ; makes it glow with superior truth and 
wisdom. This growth, slow but visible, is a progress as uncon- 
trollable as the movement- of the heavenly bodies around their 
central suns. 

Grown toward manhood, and the infant garments cannot 
be strained on. * * Creeds and dogmas are such garments 
to the spirit. When the expanding mind is forced to take up 
its abode in the habiliments of the past, its best motives are 
crushed; its feelings are stifled; its holiest emotions dried up; 
and it becomes barren as the desert sands of Sahara, cold and 
frigid as the icebergs around the frozen poles. * * 

It matters little whether born on a throne or in a manger • 
when reformers arise in their manhood all conventionalities crum- 
ble away, and king and peasant stand in the same light. When 
sublime intuitions fill their overflowing souls and they reveal 
man's relations to the universe and to his fellow man, distinc- 
tions vanish in the rapturous glow of eloquence, as the frost ■ 
work of night vanishes in the rays of the rising sun. Confucius 
was nobly born ; Zoroaster stated his ideas from a throne ; 
Mohammed was a noble ; their converts count by the hundred 
million. Eighteen centuries ago a poor carpenter's *son was 
cradled in a manger, and arose and with a breath overturned 
all the cherished idols of h's time, and founded a system of 
transcendental purity, which is the ideal, even now, of the civ- 
ilized world. — Hudson Tuttle, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



287 



Treatment of Criminals. 

We believe that in the treatment of criminals, the first and 
paramount object, should be to reform them, and that the best 
interests of society would be promoted by the means best 
adapted to secure this end. It is necessary to restrain offend- 
ers against the laws of morality, but care should be taken to 
bring them under such moral influences as will tend to develop 
in them the power of self-government. The prisoner should 
be made to feel that the discipline to which he is subjected is 
dictated by love to him no less than by a regard for the wel- 
fare of the community ; and he should be encouraged by the 
assurance that the government will gladly restore him to liberty 
just as soon as it can do so with safety to himself and to society. 
Prisons should be under the control of persons of the highest 
moral qualifications, and their inmates should be visited by 
those who feel a tender concern for their welfare. — Pennsylvania 
Yearly Meeting of Progressive Friends ; Longwood, Pa., i860. 

Friends of Human Progress. 

Yearly meetings at Collins, Erie County, at Waterloo, 
Seneca County, New York, and at Sturgis, Michigan ; for free 
and orderly discussion. 

Resolved, That while we renew and emphasize our testi- 
mony, and keep up our efforts in behalf of the practical Reforms 
of the day, we deem it of high importance as foundation work 
for character, and attainment of true manhood and woman- 
hood, that freedom of the soul be asserted and maintained 
inviolate ; such freedom as is loyal to the truths of the spirit 
within us, truths which shall grow in power and beauty, as 
superstitions decay, as creeds are put aside, and as books are 
used as helpers, and not accepted as masters. 

Resolved, That we urge as an important part of true reli- 
gion, what may be termed the religion of the body ; that rever- 
ence for its delicate offices and sacred functions which shall lead 



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to purity of thought and of personal habits, to control over 
appetite and passion, to abstinence from all that is injurious, 
and temperance in all that is healthful, and shall put aside all 
filthy and degrading practices and defilements, and make our 
common food and drink a daily sacrament of health and purity, 
fitting the body for the uses of life, and making it a consecrated 
temple for the immortal spirit. 

Resolved, That over every Judge's bench and over the 
doors of every prison should be written, "Justice, Safety, 
Reform, uplifting of the weak and the depraved, but no ven- 
geance." And that we would aid every change in prison disci- 
pline, and every step in the treatment of criminals that reaches 
above vengeance, and has in view that more perfect safety that 
comes with the reform of the erring. 

Resolved, That we favor equal suffrage and equality of 
rights for woman, because it is just and therefore full of benefit. — 

These resolutions were passed at all the meetings. 

Dogma vs. Truth. 

If we deny that God had revealed himself to all mankind, 
our creed is little better than open atheism, for we deny the orig- 
inal gift of his free grace to the human soul. 

But the reverent and enlightened mind, who receives Him 
in the way of his coming, can read the ancient conceptions of 
mankind, whether in the Scriptures of the Jews, the Christians, 
the Vedas, the Avestas, the writings of Seneca or Plato, or the 
monuments of Egypt or Babylon, with a grateful interest that 
they have been preserved from the tooth of time. He will not, 
however, build his faith upon these : for then his faith becomes 
a superstition, which in the e7id will but blind his spiritual vision 
and blunt the perceptions of his soul. 

In a recent address a Hindoo convert said: "I go to India 
to preach a universal faith ; I shall not tell the people our Script- 
ures are all right, and yours all a delusion and folly, but I shall 
appeal to the beautiful and true in both to demonstrate the uni- 
versality of God's love." 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



289 



This is the frame of mind in which man should approach his 
brother. * * * And we will be willing to apply the same 
rule of common sense and just criticism to the Writings we 
have received from our Fathers, that we apply to the Scriptures 
of the Hindoos, or the Wisdom of Confucius. The golden rule 
will be ours — we will mete out unto others that which we would 
have them measure to us. * * * * 

As Dr. Arnold says, " Faith without reason is not properly 
faith, but mere power-worship • and power-worship may be 
devil-worship, for it is reason which entertains the idea of God, 
an idea essentially made up of truth and goodness no less than 
power." 

This was the great thought of Jesus ; and yet to-day how 
much of that which is taught in his name is but mere power- 
worship ! The truthful mind, therefore, has no other alternative 
but to accept the language of Dr. Arnold, and "to pronounce 
it not to be God's voice ; for no sign of power, in confirmation 
of it, can alone prove it to be of God." 

Dogma cannot establish the immortality of our nature to the 
satisfaction of a single mind. It is the soul that speaks, and 
the reason which listens to the knowledge which God himself 
conveys. Providence has granted to all men this voice. The 
avenues or channels through which divine information flows to 
the soul can be closed or obstructed by sin or superstition ; 
and spiritual darkness thus intervenes. The only means by 
which the obstruction can be removed is by removing the cause. 

Popular Christianity holds up the idea of belief or dogma 
as the constituent or first principle in religion; hence the 
degraded condition of the Christian world, and hence the 
assertion that all communication from God is confined to a 
book written many hundreds of years ago. * * 

Evangelical Christianity is to-day seeking to engraft upon 
the Constitution of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, its 
narrow, unphilosophical, untenable, and uncharitable creed. 
To correct this tendency of the Church let enlightened views 
be disseminated in men's minds ; and the time may come, in 



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the Providence of God, when we can adopt the language of 
the poet-laureate of England, — 

" Ring out the old, ring in the new, 
Ring out the false, ring in the true." 

Will this lead us to undervalue the books of the olden 
time ? Not so ! The conceptions that ancient people have 
formed will become more valuable and dearer to us, because 
we appreciate them in the light of reason and truth. — David 
Newport, Pa. {Member of Society of Friends — "Hicksite") 

The God-given Power to See or Receive a Truth, is 
God's Command to Impart It. 

I regard all truth as coming from God, and hence eternal, 
universal, always good, and from its nature incapable, when 
rightly used, of being anything but good, to any person, 
at any time or place. There is, and can be, no new truth. 
Every truth, however recently discovered, has existed through 
all time; every philosophical or mathematical principle, 
every property of material bodies, is eternal. No matter 
when or by whom it was discovered, it pre-existed in the Divine 
Mind, and is the embodiment of a Divine thought. 

When Dr. Herschel and Leverier discovered a " new 
planet," they were but favored to see what had always existed ; 
the discovery was new, not the object discovered; and so of each 
principle or property in physical science. The same holds of 
spiritual truths, which are as much realities as physical truths. 
They are from the same eternal source, and communicated in 
like manner whenever a mind or soul is prepared — that is, suffi- 
ciently enlightened, expanded or purified — to receive them, 
Every such revelation, spiritual or physical, is for good to man- 
kind; as witness the happy influences of the many physical 
discoveries and devices within the past century upon the com- 
fort, convenience and interests of humanity. 

" Every good and perfect gift is frojn above, from the Father 
of Light, with whom is no variableness nor shadow of turning f 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



291 



but these " good gifts " existing from creation have not been 
imparted to man, many of them, until the past half century. 
There must be a cause for this, something has changed, I think 
it is man. So far from man being a fallen being, and his high- 
est condition past, the human family has advanced so that man 
occupies a higher plane than was before. He has come nearer 
to God, and been enabled to partake more of His image, both 
in the creative faculty, so to call it, and in the diffusion of bless- 
ings to his fellow-creatures. * * * But this preparation 
must be by man ; he must put inquiries to nature ; and attent- 
ively and patiently await her answers. * . * * 

Not that the highest degree is yet attained ; great blessings, 
no doubt, are still in the Divine Treasury, waiting until some 
one is sufficiently advanced or elevated to receive them, and 
add them to the long list of "good gifts." * * * 

Now let it be observed emphatically, that these revelations, 
as I term them, or the knowledge of these truths and laws that 
have proved of such incalculable benefit to man, have not been 
made to or obtained by the idle and thoughtless, but they are 
the reward of the industrious, patient, devoted worker, the close 
observer, the man who questions nature with an unshaken con- 
fidence in the uniformity of her laws, which are the laws of God, 
and partake of His unchangeable wisdom and goodness. 

All this, in my confident belief, is equally true of spiritual 
realities and the revelations of spiritual truths, which make up 
the heart or condition of humanity. Every added one expands 
the mind or soul, and increases its enlightenment. Their being 
successively imparted is interesting evidence of the progress of 
humanity. They are not revealed to the idle and thoughtless, 
but to the industrious and devoted seeker into the depths of his 
spiritual nature, watchfully observing the changes in his own 
moral consciousness, inquiring into the causes by which these 
changes are produced, and by the aid of that Light which is 
freely furnished, discovering spiritual truths never before 
revealed. By this means he becomes deeply instructed in 
spiritual things, learns the nature and power of spiritual influ- 



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ences and forces, and that they are as real and invariable as 
those that govern material bodies. When not restrained by 
considerations of policy arising from Society organizations, 
there is the same noble impulse to impart what has been 
discovered, to share with others the treasure found, and place 
it in the stock of common knowledge. 

In every department of science, whose votaries make known 
every discovery, or what was believed to be such, as soon as it 
was made, there has been a great and steady advance. One 
discovery prepared the way for another. 

In the spiritual department, if so it may be termed, the case 
has been very different. The field has been largely occupied, 
but the advance, if whatever change has been produced can be 
called an advance, has been comparatively very slow. For 
this there must be some cause, and this must be with ma,7i y not 
God. He would surely reveal truths connected with man's 
higher life and eternal interests as freely and fully as He has 
revealed those in other departments. 

The hindering cause or causes are principally two. A 
conviction has obtained that all revelation has ceased, that 
the whole mind and will of God respecting man is contained in 
the Bible ; that every spiritual discovery or illumination must 
conform to what is therein recorded, thus regarding any advance 
as unhoped for and impossible, and that the only means of 
progress in a knowledge of spiritual truths is to study this Book. 

The second impediment is a prevailing belief that a know- 
edge of spiritual truths is not obtained through devotedness, 
inquiry and observation directed to the influences of our con- 
• sciousness, but that God reveals these truths, not naturally, but 
supernaturally, to a favored few, and also that there must be a 
great discrimination when and to whom these truths are 
imparted ; so that those who have been enabled to see more 
advanced and elevated truths, are restrained from disseminating 
them lest they should thereby disturb the harmony of the relig- 
ious organization of which they are members. In this respect, 
Society organization, though possessed of so many advantages, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



293 



has been a bond and restraint, preventing its development and 
growth. 

With these views, which I honestly entertain, it will be seen 
why I regard the God-given power to receive a Truth, to be 
God's command to communicate it ; believing it to be for the 
benefit of the race and not of the individual alone. Doubts 
have a right place in the mental and spiritual economy. They 
lead to a deeper and more careful examination of the subject 
in search of evidence to establish the Truth. Plant Truth, 
propagate and cultivate Truth, and then in accordance with the 
theory of "natural selection" that the strongest will prevail, 
Truth being stronger than all opposing principles, and pos- 
sessed of greater vitality and power, will flourish and spread. 
■ — Benjartiin Hallow ell, Maryland (Member of Society of 
Friends — ' ' Hicksite") 



The Lesson of Quakerism — The Inward Light. 

The distinctive doctrine of Quakerism is the affirmation of 
"the immediate teaching and influence of the Holy Spirit" in 
the human soul. It has no elaborately wrought creed, or 
articles of faith. Among Friends there is a general unity of 
belief concerning the immediate teaching of the spirit ; but a 
diversity of opinion in relation to other points of doctrine. It 
is not my aim to plead for sect, either Orthodox or Hicksite. 
The estimate of human nature which the doctrine of the " Inner 
Light " necessitates is an exalted one. Logically it subordinates 
everything else. " The witness within " sits in judgment upon 
every message, verbal or written, upon every action as well. 
There is no room left for a Bible of absolute authority, none 
for the functions of an exclusive Mediator and Saviour. All 
are children of the Father, and joint heirs in his divinely-human 
household. We do not need to seek to drag Jesus down, or to 
lessen his legitimate scope of influence. It should be our bus- 
iness, as it was his, to lift all humanity up to the same level of 



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immediate, conscious communication and fellowship with God. 
This has been pre-eminently the mission of Quakerism. 

The Rights of Women. 

George Fox was an early defender of the right of women to 
speak in churches. Hearing of a great union meeting to be 
held at Leicester, wherein Presbyterians, Independents, Bap- 
tists, and Episcopalians were to unite in the discussion of relig- 
ious topics, George Fox attended it. During the progress of 
the meeting, a woman started a question about some saying by 
the Apostle Peter. The presiding priest, instead of entertain- 
ing or answering her question, said to her, " I permit not a 
woman to speak in the church;" though he had before given 
liberty for any one to speak. This so outraged Fox's sense of 
justice and propriety, and so kindled his zeal, that he stepped 
up and asked the priest, " Dost thou call this place (the Steeple 
House) a church? Or dost thou call this mixed multitude a 
church?" But the priest, Yankee like, answered, by asking 
him what a church was ; when Fox replied that " The church 
was the pillar and ground of truth, made up of living stones, 
living members, a spiritual household, which Christ was the 
head of ; but he was not the head of a mixed multitude, or of 
an old house made of lime, stones and wood." This caused 
such a stir that the priest came down out of his pulpit, others 
came out of their pews, and the meeting broke up in confusion. 
Many followed Fox to an inn, where the discussion was con- 
tinued, and several were converted by him to Quakerism, 
among them the woman who asked the question and who was 
forbidden to speak in the church. 

Other women were convinced by his teaching, and shared 
with men, with quiet courage and rare moral heroism, the fear- 
ful persecution and untold sufferings in which all were involved 
by devotion to the truth as it became known to them. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



295 



Peace. 

From the beginning, Friends have been advocates of Peace. 
A Quaker civilization would abolish armies and navies; do away 
with all war and preparations for war. It would eliminate alto- 
gether the principle of destructive force from governmental 
organizations. Carried out to its ultimate, it would abolish 
sheriffs, magistrates and lawyers, and obliterate the lines of dis- 
tinction between Church and State. Politics would become 
religious in the best sense, and religion would have to do mainly 
with human needs in this phase of life. There would be due 
self-respect, and therefore respect on the part of each for the 
rights of all. The bare mention of such a state of society, 
contrasted with the present, only serves to show the broad 
margin of difference between the doctrines of most other sects 
and those of Quakerism, and between the so-called Christian 
civilization of to-day, and what is contemplated in the teach- 
ings of Jesus, as attainable by men and women. However 
distant in the future may be the full realization of this benefi- 
cent, peaceful dispensation, all who have faith in the capacity 
of human progress, and in an advancing civilization, must needs 
keep it steadily in view. — A. M. Powell^ N. Y. 



Quietism and Work. 

Generally the trials and sins of men come of magnifying 
the present incident, putting too much emphasis upon what 
they would gain, making undue account of the besetments 
and annoyances of the hour. They fail to endure as seeing 
the invisible. * * * Shall we never overcome these intox- 
ications and exaggerations, and see and dwell in the real and 
unchanging? We need to transfuse the transient with the 
perennial, and behold each day overarched with the forever. 

The royal souls, remarkable for their possession and 
strength, mounting superior to all and living above sin, seem 
to have been those who were penetrated wtth this element, able 



296 



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to keep constantly in eye the great considerations. They never 
drank intoxication, maintained a perfect sobriety and sanity 
throughout. * * In presence of the grave, of onflow- 
ing time, silence of the everlasting, the passions of men 
are hushed : the resentments cease to follow there. With per- 
fect consideration ever, we should be in perfect poise, never a 
ruffle upon the bosom of the deep sea of our peace. 

It is plain, however, that there are qualifications for all this 
thing, counter-truths that must not be overlooked. If there 
were no want, no incitement, there would be no movement, no 
action or life. The supreme world speaks to us as law. Exist- 
ence is not quiescence : the virtues are not passive solely. 
There are stakes to be contended for, heights to be won, vic- 
tories to be earned. We are in time, and our present possession 
is not infinite. It would seem the very solution itself of the 
contradiction is a contradiction. The repose is in action : the 
rest is by motion. The eternal is to be sought by successive 
advances in time : we are to grasp the transcendant, the ideal, 
in the actual ; substance, in the forms. We are to renounce, 
to realize ; and to pursue, to realize ; to seek, to cling to, to 
fasten upon, to reach the intangible and everlasting. 

All the great deeds of history have been done under an 
intensity of impression, a power of conviction, a sense of must, 
that burned and melted all before it. It seems to be essential 
to any performance that the mind should be charged, we might 
say overcharged, with the imperative weight of the work. Eter- 
nity is to be so realized in time, and the god takes our eyes 
with illusion. Life is a conflict, and ever a kind of contradic- 
tion : two opposing elements are converged and blended in 
each single instant. To fulfill well our mission we must see 
time also, and read the imperative command of the moment 
and the hour. The high wisdom is to read aright, and to 
marry and blend action in repose, perfect doing with perfect 
peace. 

It is an old feud that has divided the quietists from the 
workers : it has always been hard to reconcile the antagonisms, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 297 

and there has been some lack of appreciation and fairness on 
both sides. These two sects have always, that is, among the 
earnest people, divided the world. On the one side is medi- 
tation, on the other exertion ; on one, satisfaction, at least calm, 
on the other thirst, solicitude, the ambitions of doing. They 
charge haste, and impatience of accomplishment, and a certain 
intolerance, upon the doers : these charge indisposition to 
work, a lazy optimism, and criminal indifference, upon those. 
One is the saintship of zeal,, and frequently of heat and impoise : 
the other is the saintship of inner containing, and not seldom 
of unlawful renunciation. The full union and reconciliation 
of the two traits we do not yet find in society or individuals. 
It is a very nice medium to hit. The optimism mast be con- 
quest, the faith that is intense love and serene victory, the 
zeal of devotion, the recognized claim of the everlasting, and 
resting in the everlasting, the two virtues blent indissolubly into 
one as in the godhead in the heavens. Perhaps it will need 
more age and ripeness to the race, finer births, to make approx- 
imation to the true ideal to any large extent possible. * * 
We need to be reminded constantly of the unshifting, the 
eternal element. There is so much of stir, pressure, and heat, 
so little of poise in the world. But this is not all : we need 
action, a true recognition, and royal fealty. There is great 
lack of this, a criminal optimism, a disposition to excuse our- 
selves, and dwell in trust and quiescence, inertia, rather than in 
wrestling, prevailing prayer. So the world, much as it needs 
teachers of the former, still needs prophets and evangelists of 
the latter. — C. D. B. Mills, Syracuse, N. Y. 

Christ's Character — The Real Gospel. 

The world itself is changed, and is no more the same that 
it was ; it has never been the same since Jesus left it. The air 
is charged with heavenly odors, and a kind of celestial con- 
sciousness, a sense of other worlds is wafted on us in its breath. 
Let the dark ages come, let society roll backward, and churches 
19 



298 



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perish in whole regions of the earth, let infidelity deny, and 
what is worse, let spurious piety dishonor the truth ; still there 
is a something here that was not, and a something that has 
immortality in it. Still our confidence remains unshaken, that 
Christ and his all-quickening life are in the world, as fixed ele- 
ments, and will be to the end of time. For Christianity is not 
so much the advent of a better doctrine, as of a perfect char- 
acter ; and how can a perfect character, once entered into life 
and history, be separated and finally expelled? It were easier 
to untwist all the beams of light in the sky, separating and 
expunging one of the colors, than to get the character of Jesus, 
which is the real gospel, out of the world. — Horace Bush?iell. 



Natural Religion. 

But some may say there are no motives in Natural Religion, 
no commands of God to be obeyed with gain, or disobeyed 
with loss. 

No man has talked with God, God has talked with no man. 
But the commands are there, written in the constitution and 
relation of things ; written on the body, and the soul, and the 
earth, and the heavens. Is there no motive to abstain from 
drunkenness but the command of God in the Bible ? Drunken- 
ness will bring sickness, poverty, disgrace, sorrow to friends, 
delirium tremens, premature death, debasement of soul. Are 
not these sufficient motives ? This which is true of drunken- 
ness, is true of everything in the world. 

Why should we keep the Sabbath ? Because God com- 
manded it? The Mohammedans keep Friday; the Jews, Sat- 
urday ; the Christians, Sunday. There is not a word in the 
Bible to indicate that we are to rest on the first day of the 
week ! There is a positive command to keep the seventh ; 
yet we refuse to keep the seventh, and do keep the first. All 
days are alike holy. The motive to keep Sunday is not in 
the command of God, there exists no such command ; the 
motive is in the welfare of society. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 299 

A great many people fear that if we break away from the 
supernatural, we break away from religion. No : we only break 
away from superstition. 

Among the believers of all revealed religions there are some 
base, some noble, some irreligious. As an eminent author has 
justly remarked, the shortness of time has furnished as many 
arguments to the debauchee as to the devotee. That scheme 
which says a man must repent in order to be saved, says also 
that one may repent at any time — on a sick bed and in old 
age; and that in repentance all sins will be washed away. On 
this theory, therefore, many people conclude to take their fill 
of sin in their healthy years, hoping to find time to repent in 
their old age or on the bed of death. A belief in Natural 
Religion will do more to prevent iniquity than any other, 
because nature cannot be improved. Her penalties are sure : 
they are sufficient and only sufficient. Exact justice, which 
cannot be escaped, nature metes to all. When people believe 
this, they will be careful not to violate nature's laws. 

Watts says, and he utters the spirit of Christendom, " Blind 
unbelief is sure to err." All that is true, but more, also is true. 
"Blind belief is sure to err." Hundreds of people, through a 
lingering superstition of the power of faith, cling to old notions 
and doctrines as though there were merit in believing, and they 
will therefore believe to the last moment. There is no merit 
in belief We ought to believe just so far as there is reason, 
and no farther. An honest doubter is as acceptable to God as 
an honest believer; the merit is in the honesty, not in the 
doubt nor belief. In Natural Religion, faith without evidence 
is sin. We believe in faith ; we cherish it ; but no farther than 
we find a rock foundation on which it may rest. 

The great obstacle which stands in the way of Protestants 
is the prejudice that there can be no imperfection in the Bible. 
They refuse to hear anything except what is taught from its pages 
or said in its defense. The great requirement of the present, is to 
get our hearts open, and our ears open, so as to learn all there is 
to learn in the world. All that helps truth helps religion, Nat- 



3°° 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



ural religion accepts a cheerful face and believes in a cheerful 
heart. Sorrow is inevitable with imperfection, but in order to 
be religious, it is not necessary to artificially increase it. Man 
is the only laughing animal, and a good laugh is as acceptable 
to God as a good cry. Both have their uses. The long-faced, 
austere, ascetic Christianity is not natural. The pain that comes 
is to be bravely borne, but we are not to seek it. Seek the 
sunshine — make life as pleasant and joyous as it can be 
made. 

Take good care of human nature, and you take good care 
of religion. Out of the best human hearts grows the best 
religion, as largest crops grow from the finest soil. Cultivate, 
make rich, make broad, make sympathetic, make true and 
noble the souls of men, and you are sure to grow the noblest 
religion. Human nature in its healthy development bring forth 
good. — Herman Bisbee, Wisconsin. 

Immortality in the Light of Science. 

The earliest and most durable records of humanity are 
records of spiritual impulses, hopes, faiths, — gropings of the 
human mind to adjust its relations, speculatively and practically, 
with some mysterious Power believed to rule the universe, — 
Teachings out and up of the finite into the infinite. But all the 
facts on this side of human experience these scientists ignore. 
They confine their attention to physical phenomena, and do 
not consider the phenomena of faith, reverence, worship. And 
yet these latter phenomena, whatever their origin, make up half 
of the recorded history of mankind, and present the facts that 
bear most intimately on this question of immortality. That 
surely can be no complete science which ignores them. And 
there is another class of phenomena, which, however much 
scientific men may now deride them, and however much of 
fraud and charlatanism may be mixed up with them, will per- 
sist, I believe, in forcing themselves upon human attention 
until science shall give them a just investigation and recogni- 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



301 



tion. I refer to the phenomena of mesmerism, clairvoyance, 
animal magnetism, along with which whatever is well authenti- 
cated in " Spiritualism " is to be placed. What shall we say of 
that bond between two lives, hundreds of miles apart in space, 
which, like an electric wire, gives instantaneous intelligence of 
the experience of the one to the other ? Of this we have well- 
authenticated instances, and among persons not easily deluded 
and not addicted to implicit acceptance of every new thing that 
appears. Science may treat these reports all alike with incre- 
dulity and contempt (as many of them deserve to be treated) ; 
but then life, as science confesses, is riddle upon riddle, and its 
secrets are not yet all guessed. And I believe it will be found 
in the end that this class of phenomena to which I now refer, 
and which are so closely related to the mysterious connection 
that exists between mind and body, will, when investigated and 
classified, have an important bearing on the revelation of things 
pertaining to the future that are now inscrutable to reason. 

One other defect I have to note in the argument of those 
men of science who undertake positively to deny immortality. 
They frequently leave the calm, judicial tone of pure science, 
which simply reports facts and lets them fall, as it were, of their 
own gravity into system, and write like interested advocates of 
their hypothesis. They become partizan and dogmatic. Some 
of them are guilty of as pure dogmatism as are the theologians 
and ecclesiastics whom they treat with such disdain. When 
Btichner, for instance, warms into indignant eloquence over the 
tediousness and horror of the very conception of eternal exist- 
ence, which he contrasts with the welcome repose of annihila- 
tion, we see that he has left the character of the student of 
science and put on the robes of the priest. The passage betrays 
that he is not writing from facts, but from a prepossessed opinion. 
So when, in opposition to the theory that the soul may have in 
its future life a body similar to its present, but more refined and 
ethereal, he declares that "the human body is composed of the 
most delicate and most perfect organs and cannot be conceived 
to become still finer and more perfect," we are reminded of 



302 



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that theological dogmatism which undertakes to assert that this 
or that doctrine must answer the needs of men for all time, that 
a certain religious system is completely rounded and contains 
all possible truth, or that some historical character has given an 
example ultimate and absolute for all human attainment and 
can never in all the eternities be surpassed. 

The primordial substance, force, power, whatever it is in 
essence, from which all things have been evolved, must have 
been, as we have already seen, germinal with intelligence as 
well as with material energy and form. This fact in some shape 
is admitted by these scientists. Buchner allows a " formative 
principle in the organic and inorganic world." Dr. Carpenter, 
writing on the subject of vital force, discussing the question 
whether it is something apart from matter itself, says : " What 
the germ really supplies is not the force, but the directive 
agency." Something of this kind has to be admitted in order 
to account for the fact that things are produced not by hap- 
hazard, but according to certain types ; that one germ-cell for 
instance, develops into a bird, and another, not distinguishable 
from it, into a man. Even though the types have all come by 
the gradual action of "natural selection" from one type, that 
does not avoid the necessity of admitting a " formative princi- 
ple" somewhere. This "formative principle," or "directive 
agency, " may not be a separate entity from the matter in which 
it works. We need not necessarily conceive of it as a creative 
spirit or force apart from matter and acting upon it from the 
outside. Let it be inherently involved in the very existence of 
matter, — something inseparable from its original substance : 
still, it implies intelligence, purpose, volition. Matter and spirit 
may be one and indivisible, but both must be represented in 
the primary essence of the universe, since both have appeared 
in "the phenomena of the universe. The scientific conception of 
them must be that they are equally eternal in essence. And the 
whole history of the universe, its varied evolutions, develop- 
ments, manifestations of force, productions of organism, types 
of being, systems and creatures, may be scientifically repre- 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



sented as the result of the mutual action of these two elements. 
The directive agency is working its way out of chaos into and 
through material forms, and rising constantly to higher mani- 
festation of itself therein. In man it comes to self-conscious 
ness. Doubtless by the principle of correlation we may trace 
a thread of identity between the inanimate law of the inorganic 
world, the instinct of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, 
the semi-reason and volition of the higher species of the brute 
creation, and the self-conscious intelligence and free moral 
choice that belong to civilized man. These may all be 
regarded as phases and stages in the progress of the same 
formative principle. It may even be admitted that there are 
some glimmerings of self-conscious intelligence, and even per- 
haps of a moral sense, in animal races that are below man, and 
that were antecedent to him in the process of evolution. Still 
when the organism of man is reached after this long process 
of development, the elements of this primary formative prin- 
ciple expand and flower into vastly more wonderful phenom- 
ena, — into conscious reflection, moral perception and purpose, 
will and foresight; into self-sacrificing beneficence and love; into 
not merely perceptions of existing order and beauty and good- 
ness, but abstract conceptions of an ideal Excellence beyond 
anything that sense or experience reveals ; and, more than all, 
into a creative, intelligent energy, which is capable of taking 
up nature's thought and processes, and voluntarily carrying 
them forward, in a sense, to still higher completion. All these 
powers did not, it is true, suddenly appear in full fruition with 
the appearance of human beings on the planet. They, too ' 
have come by the slow gradation of development. But they 
have appeared in man as they have appeared in no race below 
or anterior to him. And they make man what no other order 
of beings on earth is, a rational observer and student of nature, 
and an intelligent, free co-worker with her forces. We may 
say, indeed, that with the human race a new form of force, a 
new development of vital energy, comes into the universe. It 
is the force of personality. Man has the ability to convert by 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



rational choice the resources and powers of nature to the ser- 
vice of his purposes. He is free to make all forms of force 
and life that were before him tributary to his being. Thus he 
has the power voluntarily and consciously to progress upon his 
own nature. That capacity of progress (through the law of 
" natural selection, " or by any other method) which, in the 
development of organic life anterior to him, has been shown in 
the advance from type to type, reappears in him transmuted 
into intelligent and moral volition. Henceforward progress is 
secured, not by the production of one type from another, but 
by conscious development within the human type. The pro- 
ductive directing agency having become consciously creative 
in man, his nature is germinal with all future types, and he is 
able himself to realize them without any break in his conscious 
identity. An ideal is ever before him, and ever he advances 
to its attainment, ideal upon ideal continually leading him on. 
And this is true of the individual and of the race. 

Even if we keep, then, on the ground of these scientific 
materialists, remaining faithful to the doctrine of the correlation 
and conservation of forces and allowing it to be applied to 
mental phenomena, we may still say that in the intellectual, 
moral, and spiritual contents of consciousness, man carries 
elements of being that are indestructible. Let them be phe- 
nomena : they are phenomena that presuppose a substance that 
has existed from eternity and that cannot be conceived as pass- 
ing out of existence. Admit that they would not have come, 
save through the physical organism with which they are con- 
nected ; still, the germ of them is not the organism, but existed 
anterior to it, and helped in its production. That is, the 
directive energy, the formative principle, from which side of 
the primitive substance of things mind must be said to have 
come, has been as necessary in the production of the physical 
organism as the physical organism has been necessary to the phe- 
nomena of human consciousness. We can say, indeed, nothing 
better, nothing more correct metaphysically and scientifically, 
of the phenomena of consciousness, of these perceptions of 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 305 

truth, virtue, beauty, which the human mind possesses, than 
that they are the inherent qualities of the eternal substance of 
all intelligence, brought to manifestation, through the human 
organism, in finite personality. This gives to man a base of 
everlastingness in the universe. And in that capacity of pro- 
gress of which I have spoken, and to which we are able to 
assign no limit, — that progress of the human type, through 
creative intelligence and choice, which corresponds to the ante- 
rior progress from type to type, — man carries the elements also 
not merely of everlastingness, but of personal continuance. As 
mechanical force rises into chemical force, and chemical force 
into what must still be called "vital force" (though what the 
term signifies may be in dispute), and vital force rises and 
expands in various forms of manifestation till it comes to its 
highest form in the personal consciousness of man, so, without 
any break in the law, may this new force of human personality 
open into some other form of life, and still preserve individual 
identity. The mighty energy that is enwrapped in the human 
will, the indomitable sense of duty that tramples down tempt- 
ing pleasures and impels man to conflict and self-sacrifice for 
the right, the wealth of love that he lavishes and that no limit 
of years exhausts, the unsatisfied spirit within him forever peer- 
ing over the walls of knowledge in search of new realms of 
truth, — as these testify to a past eternity which has been used in 
producing them, so do they point forward to a future eternity 
which they are to use as conscious creative forces in the uni- 
verse. — William J. Potter. 

Future of Earth and Man. 

The earth's foundations were laid deep and enduring in the 
eternity of the past ; and after unceasing preparations for untold 
ages, the grand factory for making men out of granite com- 
mences to produce tolerable specimens of the race, with the 
promise of vastly better in the future : but just as it does so, 
these people believe it will be burnt up, swept with universal 



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destruction, that it may be refitted for a handful of "saints," 
certainly no better than the average of their neighbors, who are 
to occupy it forever. No danger! That the earth will cease 
to exist as it began to be, there is no doubt ; but its end lies 
far away in the ages to come, when its fruit is ripe and its work 
is done. 

A tree that takes twenty years to arrive at maturity will last 
for a hundred years at least ; and since the earth has grown 
during many millions of years, as we now know, we may safely 
calculate on its continuance for millions of years to come. 
Our eyes have not yet beheld the whole of its surface. Shall 
our inheritance be taken from us before we have seen it ? We 
have not used the stores laid up for us in this world's cellar; 
nay, we are finding new ones almost every day, and therefore 
have good reason to believe that we have not yet discovered 
all the treasures prepared for us. Shall the earth be destroyed 
before we have received its gifts or appropriated its blessings ? 

The world is a noble vessel, freighted with a thousand 
million souls, furnished with boundless stores in her deep hold, 
fairly started for a distant port, every sail at last set, having the 
best of captains, who will hardly run her upon a rock for the 
sake of making a raft out of the wreck for a handful of noisy 
passengers, leaving the rest to perish. 

After we have decided that the world shall endure for ages, 
the question next arises, What will be its future condition ? Is 
it the forest monarch, its trunk rounded to its full capacity, its 
branches matured, its fruit perfect, the years of the future 
adding nothing to its glory ? or is it a tree with its heart unknit, 
its best branches undeveloped, its beauty unmatured, its fruit 
imperfect, waiting for that which time alone can bring ? 

Old as geology represents the world to be, it still more 
clearly shows its youth; and the philosopher calmly waits for 
its improvement, as an intelligent parent does for that of his 
child. 

No man ever saw the earth in a better condition for man's 
occupancy than it is to-day. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



" Abraham saw no fairer stars 
Than those that burn for thee and me. " 

Amid countless mutations, it will still march on to its great 
and glorious destiny. Behind the eastern hills lie brighter days 
than have yet dawned, and the earth shall rejoice in their 
glory. 

Progress is the law of our globe, as geology abundantly 
testifies. If we could but glance at its history for fifty or a 
hundred years, we might doubt it ; but sweeping over the ages 
of the mighty past, and contrasting its early appearance with 
those widely succeeding, we can doubt no longer. We see it 
a puling infant in its fiery cradle, curtained with sulphurous 
clouds ; then with the bare, flinty rock for its floor, and life as 
impossible as in a fiery furnace, its air more poisonous than the 
breath of a volcano, and its rain as corrosive as sulphuric acid. 
In time, rocks are ground to mud, and the simplest of plants 
spread their rootlets through it in search of nutriment. The air 
loses its sulphur and its carbon, which are stored away for distant 
uses. The water becomes purer, and all elements better fitted 
for the development and sustentation of life, which advances 
from the seaweed to the cedar, the wheat, and the rose-bush ; 
from the unsensitive radiate, through mollusk, fish, reptile, bird, 
and mammal, to intelligent man. If the world has thus 
improved in the past, what more reasonable than that it shall 
continue to improve in the future ? If it has marched with 
such an unfaltering step in the pathway of progress for such 
an immense period, who can doubt that it will continue so to 
do ? Why should progress cease at this period in the world's 
history? If there was any reason for improvement when there 
was nothing to behold it but the leaden eye of the fish, or to 
care for it but the dull reptile, how much more reason now that 
man is here, eagerly watching every advance, his happiness 
increasing at every step of its progress ! 

Not only does the knowledge of the past that geology gives 
enable us to predict the general improvement of the earth as 
man's abode, but by it we can indicate more particularly the 



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direction that this improvement will take. First, volcanoes will 
die, and earthquakes cease. * * * 

I regard man as the fruit of the tree of life; and, if 
he is, beyond the fruit the tree cannot go. A tree advances 
from root to stem, from stem to branch, from branch to leaf, 
and from leaf to blossom and fruit, each rising in importance 
above the other; but when the fruit is attained, all that can 
be done is to perfect it. The root of the great tree of life is 
the radiata, their raying, ramifying arms and fingers forming its 
spreading radicles ; the trunk of this tree, the mollusca ; their 
shelly covering, its bark. The jointed bodies of the articulates 
form its branches : the vertebrates are the leaves. Every leaf 
has a mid-rib passing through its center, from which ribs go to 
each side of the leaf to strengthen it, as in vertebrates the 
back-bone passes through the center of the animal, and ribs 
proceed from it on both sides. The blossoms are the mammalia 
or milk-producing animals ; and its fruit, humanity, waiting for 
the ages to ripen it. This grand old tree has been advancing 
for ages, renewing its rootlets, shedding its old bark, losing 
unnumbered branches in the storms of the past, and dropping 
myriads of leaves and blossoms, but, with a sound heart, 
reproducing better than it lost, and fruiting in good time, with 
the promise of the best when that fruit is fully ripe. But what 
evidence is there that man is the fruit of this wonderful tree ? 
What peculiarity is there in the fruit of a tree that distinguishes 
it from every other part ? It contains a living principle which 
possesses unlimited duration, and, under favorable circum- 
stances, may unfold into a tree equal or superior to that from 
which it sprang. Let a piece of the root be separated from the 
tree, and it speedily dies, and is resolved to dust : in like man- 
ner, bark, branches, blossoms, leaves, perish when their connec- 
tion with the parent plant is dissevered. The fruit alone contains 
the power of continuous existence within itself. Drop it on 
the ground or bury it, and it lives and grows., and sends its 
type down the ages : so man. The polyp, the snail, the worm, 
the fish, reptile, bird and beast may die when death comes, and 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



return to the undistinguised dust from which they sprang ; but 
man possesses that over which death has no power, and the 
extinction of one life is but the dawn of another of greater 
power and beauty. Some there are who doubt this : to such 
this argument will have no weight ; but to those who believe 
in the soul's future, and to others who, like myself, know that 
we continue to live hereafter, the reasonableness of this will 
be apparent. — William Denton. 

True Prayer. 

In its essence, prayer is something deeper than words. 
Words are but one of many forms in which true prayer may 
find expression; nor has everything that passes for prayer a 
right to bear the name. Volubility of tongue is commonly in 
the inverse ratio to prayerfulness of spirit. When the soul 
prays best, the lips are sealed. A torrent of words poured 
forth with pious whine, shouted or screamed, perhaps, at the 
top of the voice, is too often the soul's ostentatious proclama- 
tion of its own prayerlessness. Deep feeling is no master of 
rhetoric. I would rather listen to the rumbling of cartwheels 
over stone pavements than to a rhetorical prayer. The one is 
honest, the other is dishonest, noise. 

True prayer is the soul's deep homage to goodness and 
beauty and truth, — the profound thirst for divine life, its thrill 
of reverential worship before infinite and eternal Being, its 
deep self-identification with the One and All. It is the unut- 
terable repose of the tired spirit in the boundless and living 
Whole, — the ending of ignorant struggle against the omnipres- 
ent Power that fills infinitude with itself and holds us all in the 
bosom of changeless law. It is not extinction of the private 
will, in hopeless submission to a Fate whose right is its might, 
but rather the glad identification of the private will with the 
deepest currents of the universe, its conscious and active trust 
in the "higher thoughts and higher ways" of the universal 
Mind. It is the mighty gravitation of the soul to its Source, 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



the strong attraction of its love for the Supreme Loveliness, its 
j oyous flight above the clouds into the serenest radiance of the 
empyrean. What is it not, that is deep, real, vital, in man's 
experience ? It is earnestness, it is courage, it is truthfulness, 
it is purity, it is principle, it is love, it is the uplifting of the 
heart to God and self-dedication to all that is God-like. It is 
the outflashing of the inner light into the outward life. It is 
the supreme experience that makes an oasis in the desert of 
desolate years. 

The spirit of prayer is thus the Soul of Nature breathing 
through the soul of man. Wherever it lives and moves, it as 
inevitably creates some form of self-expression as a gushing 
spring creates for itself a channel. But its forms of expression 
are as diverse as the faces and the characters of men. It 
would be as idle as presumptuous to prescribe one and the 
same form for all. Let each heart utter its own life in its own 
way. Everything is a prayer, a true and genuine prayer, that 
expresses an inward endeavor and longing for diviner character. 
It may utter itself without words in the heightened color of the 
cheek, the quick suffusing of the eye, in the unconscious bow- 
ing of the head, in the swifter throbbing of the heart, in the 
escape of a contrite sigh, in the electric thrill of the nerves at 
the sight of beauty or goodness ; all these, and countless others, 
may be prayers more full, more complete, than the blended 
supplications of a mighty multitude. 

However it may utter itself, whether with or without voice, 
this uplifting of the heart to the Absolute Best is the fountain 
of noble living and high character ; and prayer, truly conceived, 
means each and every expression of this inward self-consecra- 
tion. Truly to pray is to be conscious of a deep devotion to 
the ideal and perfect Good, and to put this inward devotion 
into some sincere expression. The one prayer incumbent upon 
all is to live nobly ; beyond this, there is no obligation. Yet 
I count it a mark of spiritual misdevelopment, or at least unde- 
velopment, when no outgush of heart-worship ever clothes itself 
in words, — when no inward jubilee or profound yearning ever 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



seeks relief in direct speech to the omnipresent and indwelling 
One. Whether I were commanded or forbidden to pray in 
words, the two grievances would be equal ; the vocal prayer is 
mockery if it be not spontaneous and free, and if it be spon- 
taneous and free, it will not be repressed. 

True prayer, therefore, is neither an attempt to enlist 
Omnipotence in the service of our little private jobs, nor an 
attempt to undermine the foundations of the universe by over- 
throwing the changelessness of its laws. Were it either of 
these, it would be infinitely childish and ridiculous, as pulpit 
prayers too often are. But true prayer, gushing spontaneously 
from a full heart, is the simple outbreathing of a peaceful and 
reverential spirit. Even the joy of Nature is a prayer. The 
sea prays in the splendid sparkle and everlasting dash of its 
waters. The earth prays in the uplifting of its mountain peaks 
like worshipping hands. The stars of night pray with radiant 
eyelids forever trembling as if to repress tears of adoring joy. 
The universe is everywhere at prayer, laying on the altar the 
thank-offering of its own beauty and peace. Shall the soul of 
man alone be mute, and pour forth no song of thanksgiving 
and delight ? Like the birds in spring, it must utter itself in 
music. — F. E. Abbott. 



FIFTY AFFIRMATIONS. 

[The following outlines are offered as a purely individual interpretation of the free relig- 
ious movement, it being proper to state that few, if any, of its other friends will wholly 
agree with it.] 

Religion. 

1. Religion is the effort of man to perfect himself. 

2. The root of religion is universal human nature. 

3. Historical religions are all one, in virtue of this one 
common root. 

4. Historical religions are all different, in virtue of their 
different historical origin and development. 



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5. Every historical religion has thus two distinct ele- 
ments, — one universal or spiritual, and the other special or 
historical. 

6. The universal element is the same in all historical relig- 
ions j the special element is peculiar in each of them. 

7. The universal and special elements are equally essential 
to the existence of an historical religion. 

8. The unity of all religions must be sought in their uni- 
versal element. 

9. The peculiar character of each religion must be sought 
in its special element 

♦ 

Relation of Judaism to Christianity. 

10. The idea of a coming "kingdom of heaven" arose 
naturally in the Hebrew mind after the decay of the Davidic 
monarchy, and ripened under foreign oppression into a pas- 
sionate longing and expectation. 

11. The " kingdom of heaven " was to be a world-wide 
empire on this earth, both temporal and spiritual, to be estab- 
lished on the ruins of the great empires of antiquity by the 
miraculous intervention of Jehovah. 

12. The Messiah or Christ was to reign over the "kingdom 
of heaven" as the visible deputy of Jehovah, who was consid- 
ered the true sovereign of the Hebrew nation. He was to be 
Priest-King, — the supreme pontiff or high-priest of the Hebrew 
church, and absolute monarch of the Hebrew state. 

13. The "apocalyptical literature" of the Jews exhibits 
the gradual formation and growth of the idea of the Messianic 
"kingdom of heaven." 

14. All the leading features of the gospel doctrine concern- 
ing the " kingdom of heaven," the " end of the world," the 
"great day of judgment," the "coming of the Christ in the 
clouds of heaven," the "resurrection of the dead," the con- 
demnation of the wicked and the exaltation of the righteous, 
the " passing away of the heavens and earth," and the appear- 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



313 



ance of a "new heaven and a new earth," were definitely 
formed and fixed in the Hebrew mind, in the century before 
Jesus was born. 

15. John the Baptist came preaching that "the kingdom 
of heaven is at hand." But he declared himself merely the 
forerunner of the Messiah. 

16. Jesus also came preaching that "the kingdom of 
heaven is at hand," and announced himself as the Messiah or 
Christ. 

17. Jesus emphasized the spiritual aspect of the Messianic 
kingdom ; but, although he expected his throne to be estab- 
lished by the miraculous intervention of God, and therefore 
refused to employ human means in establishing it, he never- 
theless expected to discharge the political functions of his office, 
as King and Judge, when the fulness of time should arrive. 

18. As a preacher of purely spiritual truth, Jesus probably 
stands at the head of all the great religious teachers of the 
past. 

19. As claimant of the Messianic crown, and founder of 
Christianity as a distinct historical religion, Jesus shared the 
spirit of an unenlightened age, and stands on the same level 
with Gautama or Mohammed. 

20. In the belief of his disciples, the death, resurrection and 
ascension of Jesus would not prevent the establishment of the 
" kingdom of heaven." His throne was conceived to be already 
established in the heavens ; and the early church impatiently 
awaited its establishment on earth at the " second coming of 
the Christ." 

21. Christianity thus appears as simply the complete devel- 
opment of Judaism, — the highest possible fulfilment of the 
Messianic dreams based on the Hebrew conception of a 
" chosen people." 



20 



314 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



Christianity. 

22. Christianity is the historical religion taught in the 
Christian Scriptures, and illustrated in the history of the Chris- 
tian church. 

23. It is a religion in virtue of its universal element; it is 
the Christian religion in virtue of its special element. 

24. The Christian Scriptures teach from beginning to end 
that "Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ of God," — that is, the 
Hebrew Messiah. This, the Christian Confession, was declared 
both by Jesus and the apostles to be necessary to salvation or 
admission into the " kingdom of heaven." 

25. The Christian church, from its origin to the present 
day, has everywhere planted itself on faith in the Christian 
Confession, as its divinely appointed foundation, — the eternal 
"rock" against which the "gates of hell shall never prevail." 

26. The Christian Confession gradually created on the one 
hand the theology, and on the other hand the hierarchy, of the 
Roman Catholic Church. The process was not, as is claimed, 
a corruption, but a natural and logical development. 

27. The Church of Rome embodies Christianity in its 
most highly developed and perfect form, as a religion of author- 
ity based on the Christian Confession. 

28. Protestantism is the gradual disintegration of Chris- 
tianity, whether regarded theologically or ecclesiastically, under 
the influence of the free spirit of protest against authority. 

29. " Liberal Christianity," — that is, democratic autocracy 
in religion,- — is the highest development of the free spirit of 
protest against authority which is possible within the Christian 
church. It is, at the same time, the lowest development of 
faith in the Christ, — a return to the Christian Confession in its 
crudest and least developed form. 

30. Christianity is the religion of Christians, and all Chris- 
tians are believers in the Christ. 

31. The Christian name, whatever else it may include, nec- 
essarily includes faith in Jesus as the Christ of God. Any 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



315 



other use of the name is abuse of it. Under some interpreta- 
tion or other, the Christian Confession is the boundary line of 
Christianity. 

Free Religion. 

32. The Protestant Reformation was the birth of Free 
Religion, — the beginning of the religious protest against author- 
ity within the confines of the Christian church. 

33. The history of Protestantism is the history of the growth 
of Free Religion at the expense of the Christian Religion. As 
love of freedom increases, reverence for authority decreases. 

34. The completion of the religious protest against author- 
ity must be the extinction of faith in the Christian Confession. 

35. Free Religion is emancipation from , the outward law, 
and voluntary obedience to the inward* law. 

36. The great faith or moving power of Free Religion is 
faith in man as a progressive being. 

37. The great ideal end of Free Religion is the perfection 
or complete development of man, — the race serving the indi- 
vidual, the individual serving the race. 

38. The great practical means of Free Religion is the inte- 
gral, continuous and universal education of man. 

39. The great law of Free Religion is the still small voice 
of the private soul. 

40. The great peace of Free Religion is spiritual oneness 
with the infinite One. 

41. Free Religion is the natural outcome of every histor- 
ical religion, — the final unity, therefore, towards which all 
historical religions slowly tend. 

Relation of Christianity to Free Religion. 

42. Christianity is identical with Free Religion so far as its 
universal element is concerned, — antagonistic to it so far as its 
special element is concerned. 



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CHAPTERS FROM THE 



43. The corner-stone of Christianity is faith in the Christ. 
The corner-stone of Free Religion is faith in Human Nature. 

44. The great institution of Christianity is the Christian 
Church, the will of the Christ being its supreme law. The 
great institution of Free Religion is the coming Republic of 
the World, the universal conscience and reason of mankind 
being its supreme organic law or constitution. 

45. The fellowship of Christianity is limited by the Chris- 
tian Confession ; its brotherhood includes all subjects of the 
Christ, and excludes all others. The fellowship of Free Religion 
is universal and free ; it proclaims the great brotherhood of 
man, without limit or bound. 

46. The practical work of Christianity is to Christianize 
the world, — to convert all souls to the Christ, and ensure their 
salvation from the wrath of God. The practical work of Free 
Religion is to humanize the world, — to make the individual 
nobler here and now, and to convert the human race into a 
vast Co-operative Union devoted to universal ends. 

47. The spiritual ideal of Christianity is the suppression of 
self and perfect imitation of Jesus the Christ. The spiritual 
ideal of Free Religion is the development of self, and the har- 
monious education of all its powers to the highest possible 
degree. 

48. The essential spirit of Christianity is that of self-humil- 
iation at the feet of Jesus, and passionate devotion to his 
person. The essential spirit of Free Religion is that of self- 
respect and free self-devotion to great ideas. Christianity is 
prostrate on its face; Free Religion is erect on its feet. 

49. The noblest fruit of Christianity is a self-sacrificing love 
of man for Jesus' sake. The noblest fruit of Free Religion is 
a self-sacrificing love of man for man's own sake. 

50. Christianity is the faith of the soul's childhood; Free 
Religion is the faith of the soul's manhood. In che gradual 
growth of mankind out of Christianity into Free Religion, 
lies the only hope of the spiritual perfection of the individual 
and the spiritual unity of the race. — F, E. Abbott. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



317 



Physical Condition of Humanity. 

I think there is hope when a religion is presented to 
the people which is not only in favor of free thought and free 
speech, but which endeavors also to benefit the physical con- 
dition of humanity. There never was, there never can be, 
such a thing as true pleasure in vice or crime ; and yet the 
land is full of them, because, as I think, the social condition 
of the people is not cared for as it ought to be at the present 
moment. I agree with the sentiment of that great social 
reformer, Robert Owen, that the characters of men are formed 
for them, instead of by them ; and, consequently, I think the 
influence of circumstances in this country, rather than any 
natural or inherent depravity in mankind, accounts for the 
degradation and vice and crime that prevail in every section of 
the country. Let us not then suppose that it is owing to any 
natural or inherent depravity that this state of things exists, 
but only in the fact that the true remedy for social evils has 
not yet been put into practice ; but, when the remedy is applied 
the reform will be complete. And it is a great sign of the 
times, my friends, that Radicals and Liberals and free-thinking 
men are doing what lies in their power for the promotion of 
this great reform. 

Let men, if they can do no better, dream of a hereafter, to 
which I have no kind of objection; but the hereafter must be 
according to the present, and, if people live well in the present, 
they have the best preparation for the future. But to go into 
the future unprepared by the present may, perhaps, for anything 
I know to the contrary, be the same routine over again. But 
be that as it may, I am getting beyond my depth : I do not 
know anything about these matters ; I do not pretend to know. 
Being finite, frail, and imperfect, I do not presume to under- 
stand the infinite, and therefore I confine my thoughts here ; 
for I think there is enough to do in this world, and more than 
enough, to occupy all our time in improving the condition of 
the people here. And those who believe in the hereafter, 
should not object to the doctrine, because he who is right to-day 



3i8 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



will probably be right to-morrow. That there are those in the 
community who entertain these aspirations, and are endeavor- 
ing, by the aid of social science, to improve society and even 
religion itself, is one of the hopeful signs of the times. 

" Raising their voices in a chant sublime, 
They sing the glory of the coming time, 
When error shall decay, and truth grow strong, 
And right shall reign supreme, and vanquish wrong." 

Horace Seaver+ 



THEODORE PARKER. 
Teachings. 

With Protestant ministers the Bible is a Fetish ; it is with 
Catholic priests, only to them the Roman Church is the Master 
Fetish, the " Big Thunder," while the Bible is but an inferior 
and subordinate idol. For ultimate authority the minister does 
not appeal to God manifesting himself in the world of matter 
and the world of man, but only to the Bible ; to that he pros- 
titutes mind and conscience, heart and soul. Ministers take 
the Bible in a lump as divine ; all between its lids as the "Word 
of God," infallible and miraculous ; he that believeth not shall 
be damned ; and no amount of piety or morality can make up 
for not believing this. No doctor is ever so subordinate to his 
drug, no lawyer lies so prone before statute and custom, as the 
mass of ministers before the Bible. 

— The whole universe of matter is a great mundane psalm 
to celebrate the reign of Power, Law and Mind. Fly through 
the solar system from remotest Neptune to the Sun, study each 
planet, it is the same. Ask every little orange leaf, ask the 
aphis that feeds thereon, ask the insect corpses lying by 
millions in the dead ashes of the farmer's peat-fire, the remains 
of mollusks that gave up the ghost millions of years before 
man trod the globe, — they all, with united voice, answer still 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



3*9. 



the same, — power, law, mind. In all the space Irom Neptune 
to the sun, in all the time from silicious shell to the orange leaf 
of to-day, there is no failure of that power, no break of that 
law, no cessation in its constant mode of operation, no error 
of that mind, whereof all space is here, all time is now. So the 
World is witness continually to power, to never-failing law, to 
mind that is everywhere; is witness to that ever-present Power 
which men call God. Look up and reverence ; look down and 
trust. 

— One of the most remarkable things in this world is the 
abundance of beauty, feeding and comforting man's finer and 
nicer faculties. God, after setting before us what we turn to 
bread, and garments, and houses, and musical instruments, and 
books, gives us the benediction of beauty as an unexpected 
grace after meat. In all this, I see the loveliness of the Infi- 
nite Father and Infinite Mother. Not a lichen scars the rock, 
not a star flames in the sky, but it tells of the infinite loveliness 
of the infinitely loving God. 

• — Industry is the business of men. It is a dignity, and 
only idleness a disgrace, a wrong, a curse. If you earn nothing 
by head or hand, by heart or soul, then you are, and must be, 
a beggar or a thief, and neither pay for your board or lodging. 

—Let amusement fill up the chinks of your existence, but 
not the great spaces thereof. Let your pleasures be taken as 
Daniel took his prayer, with his windows open — pleasures 
which need not cause a blush on an ingenuous cheek. 

— Think of a young man growing up, conquered by his 
appetites — the soul veiled by the body, the smutch of shame 
on all the white raiment of God's youthful son, who can stoop 
the pride of his youth so low, and be a trifler, a drunkard, a 
debauchee ! The mind of man despises it, and woman's holy 
soul casts it aside with scorn. Stern as you may think me, and as 
I am, I can only weep at such decay as this, — flowers trod 
down by swine, the rainbow broken by the storm, the soul pros- 
trate and trodden by the body's cruel hoof. 

— The whole sum and substance of human history may be 



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reduced to this maxim — that when man departs from the 
divine means of reaching the divine end, he suffers loss and 
harm. 

Every vice meets its own terrific punishment. What if 
the Honorable Mr. Devil does keep his coach and six ? It is 
Mr. Devil who rides in it, and no six horses will ever carry 
him away from himself What if the young men invite him to 
sit on their platforms, and so do him honor? It only exhibits 
his devilship before the people in that high seat. He had 
better have shrunk into the lowest corner. 

— We are all connected with the World of Matter ; with 
the World of Man ; and with the World of God In each of 
these spheres we have duties to do, and rights to enjoy, which 
are consequent on the duties done. We may derive our habit- 
ual delight from any one of these three sources— the material, 
the human, and the Divine ; or we may draw from all these. 
We may content ourselves with the lowest quality of human 
delights, or we may reach up and get the highest and dearest 
quality thereof. Complete and perfect piety unites all three — 
the great Thought of the Infinity of God; the great Feeling 
of absolute love for Him ; and the great Will, the resolution 
to serve Him. The superstitious man thinks that God must 
be feared first of all; and the internal worship of God is 
accordingly, with that man, fear, and nothing but fear. Fanat- 
icism is Hate before God ; as superstition is Fear before him. 
Fanaticism is a far greater evil than Superstition ; but in our 
day it is far less common. Mysticism is sloth before God, as 
Superstition is Fear, and Fanaticism is Hate. It exists still in 
some of the churches, which cultivate only emotions of rev- 
erence, of trust, of love, and the like, but never let the love 
of God come out of the heart in the shape of the love of man. 

But the true idea of God, and the Religion which is to come 
of it — which is love of that God and keeping all his command- 
ments—will work such a revolution in man's affairs as Luther, nor 
Moses, nor yet mightier Jesus ever wrought. God in Genesis 
represents the conception of the babyhood of humanity. But 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



321 



manhood demands a different conception. All round us lies 
the World of Matter, this vast world above us and about us 
and beneath; it proclaims the God of Nature; flower speaking 
unto flower, star quiring unto star; a God who is resident 
therein, his law never broke. In us is a World of Consciousness •, 
and as that mirror is made clearer by civilization, I look down 
and behold the Natural Idea of God, Infinite Cause and Prov- 
idence, Father and Mother to all that are. Into our reverent 
souls God will come as the morning light into the bosom of 
the opening rose. 

■ — This party (Spiritualism) has an idea wider and deeper 
than that of the Catholic or Protestant, namely : that God 
still inspires men as much as ever ; that He is as immanent in 
Spirit as in space. 

For the present purpose the doctrine may be called Spirit- 
ualism. That relies on no church tradition or Scripture, as the 
last ground and infallible rule. It counts these things teachers, 
if they teach, — not masters ; helps, if they help us, — not author- 
ities. It relies on the divine presence in the soul of man, the 
eternal word of God, which is Truth as it speaks through the 
faculties he has given. It believes God is as near to the soul as 
matter is to the senses, thinks the canon of revelation not yet 
closed, nor God exhausted. It sees him in Nature's perfect 
work; hears him in all true Scriptures, Jewish or Phoenician; feels 
Him in the inspiration of the heart; stoops at the same fountain 
with Moses and Jesus, and is filled with living water. It 
calls God Father, not King; Christ brother, not redeemer; 
Heaven home, and Religion Nature. It loves and trusts, but 
does not fear. It sees in Jesus a man, living manlike, highly 
gifted, and with beautiful and blameless fidelity to God. * * 
But he lived for himself, died for himself, worked out his own 
salvation, and we must do the same; for one man cannot live 
for another, any more than he can eat and sleep for another. 
It lays down no creed, asks no symbol, reverences exclusively 
no time nor place, and therefore can use all time and every 
place. It reckons forms useful to such as they help. Its temple 



322 



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is all space, its shrine the good heart, its creed all truth, its rit- 
ual works of love and utility, its profession of faith, a divine 
life. It takes all the helps it can get ; counts no good word 
profane, though a heathen spoke it, — no lie sacred, though the 
greatest prophet said the word. Its redeemer is within, its 
salvation within, its heaven and its oracles of God. It falls 
back on perfect religion, — asks no more, is satisfied with no 
less. 

A Prayer.* 

Our Father, we thank thee for this world thou hast placed 
us in. We bless thee for the heavens over our heads, burning 
all night with such varied fire, and all day pouring down their 
glad effulgence on the ground. We thank thee for the scarf of 
green beauty with which thou mantlest the shoulders of the 
temperate world, and for all the hopes that are in this foodful 
earth, and for the rich promise of the season on every side 
of us. 

We thank thee still more for the nature which thou hast 
given us, for these earthen houses of the flesh wherein we dwell, 
and for this atom of spirit, a particle from thine own flame of 
eternity, which thou hast lodged in the clay. 

We thank thee for the large inheritance which has come 
down to us from other times. We bless thee that other men 
labored, and whilst thou hast rewarded them for their toil, we 
also have entered into the fruit of their labors, and gather where 
we have not strewed, and eat where we toiled not. 

We thank thee for the noble institutions which other days 
have bequeathed to us. We thank thee for those great and 
godly men, speaking in every tongue, inspired by thy spirit, 
whom thou hast raised up from age to age, bearing witness of 
the nobleness of man's nature, and the nearness of thy love 
towards all the sons and daughters of men, — their lives a con- 

*Music Hall, Boston j June, 1857 This prayer, with others, was reported by a friend, 
without Mr Parker's knowledge 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 323 

tinual flower of piety on earth, drawing men's eyes by its 
beauty, and stirring men's souls by the sweet fragrance of its 
heavenly flame. Most do we thank thee for him who, in an 
age of darkness, came and brought such marvelous light to :he 
eyes of men; for the truths he taught and the glorious human- 
ity he lived, blessing thee that he was the truth from thee, that 
he showed us the life that is in thee, and himself travelled 
before us the way which leads to the loftiest achievements. 

We thank thee for those whose great courage in times past 
broke the oppressor's rod and let the oppressed go free. And 
we bless thee for the millions of common men, following the 
guidance of their leaders', faithful to their spirit, and so to thee, 
who went onward in this great human march, in whose bloody 
footsteps we gather the white flowers of peace, and lift up our 
thankful hearts to thee. 

Not the less we thank thee for the men and women of great 
steadfastness of soul in our time, who have been faithful wit- 
nesses against iniquity, who light the torch of truth, and pass 
it from hand to hand, and sow the world with seeds whence in 
due time the white flowers of peace shall also spring. We are 
glad that thou pourest out liberally to all who lift up earnest 
hearts unto thee. We thank thee for the great truths which 
are old, and for the new truths also which are great, and for 
the light of justice, and the new glories of philanthropy which 
human eyes have beheld in this age for the first time. 

O Lord, we thank thee that the glories which kings and 
prophets waited for have come down to us, and that thou hast 
revealed to babes and sucklings those truths which other ages 
yearned for and found not. 

O, Thou who art Father and Mother to the civilized man 
and the savage, who seest with equal tenderness the sinner 
and the saint, having no child of perdition in thy great human 
family, we remember before thee our several lives, thanking 
thee for the joys which gladden us, the work which our hands 
find to do, the joy of its conclusion, and the education of its 
process. 



324 



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We are conscious of our follies, our transgressions, our 
stumblings by the wayside, and wanderings from the paths of 
pleasantness and peace. We know how often our hands have 
wrought iniquity, and we have been mean and cowardly at 
heart, not daring to do the right which our own souls told us 
of ; and we pray thee that we may suffer from these things, 
until, greatly ashamed thereof, we turn from them and lead glo- 
rious and noble lives. 

We thank thee, O Father, for those who make music about 
our fireside, whose countenance is a benediction on our daily 
bread, fairer to us than the flowers of earth, or the stars of 
heaven. We thank thee for those newly born into this world, 
bringing the fragrance of heaven in the infant's breath ; and if 
we dare not thank thee when our dear ones are born out of 
this world, and clothed in immortality, yet we thank thee that 
the eye of our faith can follow them still to the land where tears 
are wiped away, and the change is from glory to glory. 

O Thou who art infinite in thy power, thy wisdom, and thy 
love, — who art the God of the Christian, the Heathen, and the 
Jew, blessing all mankind which thou hast made to inhabit the 
whole earth, — we thank thee for all thy blessings, and pray 
that mindful of our nature, and of thy nearness to us, we may 
learn to live to the full height of the faculties which thou hast 
given us, cultivating them with such large and generous education 
that we shall know the truth and it shall make us free, that we 
may distinguish between those ever living commandments of 
thine and the teachings of men, that we may enlarge still more 
the affections that are in us, and that there may be in us such 
religious trust that all our daily work shall be one great act of 
service, and sacramental as our prayer. 

Thus may we be strengthened, able at all times to run and 
not be weary, to walk and never faint. Then, when our work 
on earth is finished, and the clods of the valley are sweet to 
our weary frames, may we spend eternity in the progressive 
welfare of thy children. And here on earth may the gleams 
of that future glory come upon us in our mortal life, clearing 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 325 

up the difficult paths, and strengthening our hearts. So may 
thy will be done, on earth and in heaven. 



A. B. ALCOTT. 



Sayings. 

- — If one's life is not worshipful, no one cares for his pro- 
fessions. Piety is a sentiment : the more natural it is, the 
wholesomer. Nor is there piety where charity is wanting. " If 
one love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love 
God whom he hath not seen." None are deceived as to the 
spirit of their acquaintances : the instinct of every village, 
every home, intimates true character. We recognize goodness 
wherever we find it. 'Tis the same helpful influence, beautify- 
ing the meanest as the greatest service by its manners, doing 
most when least conscious, as if he did it not. Let us have 
unspoken creeds and these quick and operative. 

■ — Persist in being yourself, and against fate and yourself. 
Faith and persistency are life's architects, while doubt and 
despair bury all under the ruins of any endeavor. You may 
pull all your paradises about your ears save your earliest ; that 
is to be yours sometime. Strive and have ; still striving till 
striving is having. "We mount to heaven mostly on the ruins 
of our cherished schemes, finding our failures were successes. 
Nor need we turn sour if we fail to draw the prizes in life's 
lottery. It were the speck in the fruit, the falling of our man- 
liness into decay. These blanks were all prizes had we the 
equanimity to take them without whimpering or discontent. 

— There is no appeal from the decisions of this High Court 
of Duty in the breast. The Ought is the Must and the Inev- 
itable. One may misinterpret the voice, may deliberate, 
disobey the commandment, but cannot escape the consequences 
of his election. The deed decides. 



326 



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— Nor is any man greatest standing apart in his individ- 
ualism ; his strength and dignity come by sympathy with the 
aims of the best men of the community of which he is a mem-, 
ber. Yet whoever seeks the crowds craving popularity for 
propping repute, forfeits his claim to reverence and expires in 
the incense he inhales. Stand fast by your convictions and 
there maintain yourself against every odds. One with yourself, 
you are one with Almighty God, and a majority against all the 
world. 

— Love you none ? Then are you lost. Love is the key 
to felicity ; nor is there a heaven to him who has it not. 

— There is nothing like comparative divinity for emanci- 
pating the mind from traditional teachings. Like travel it 
opens out new and distant regions of the globe of knowledge, 
and shows the real relations of things to one another. 

— What becomes of an age whose youth knows too much ? 
Like the old princes eager to pluck the forbidden pleasures 
from the stem ; the brazen, following fast childhood's golden 
period, and leaping wildly into the iron, the five points of 
license } the beautiful bashfulness, nature's ornament and foil, 
the preserver of chastity, torn, trodden, and lost ! 

— A period of the world like ours, when thought is so 
actively engaged in all subjects affecting human welfare, must 
be deficient in the spiritual element if it have not a solvent for 
fusing the current creeds, and recombining these in a fresher 
faith, sufficient for the present, if not for some future genera- 
tions . In the general diffusion of light, no one can hold the 
community of minds under the shadow of his special thought, 
since the revelations made to all races in times past are culmi- 
nating in a purer dispensation, suited to the new needs of the 
centuries. 

Religion and Science. 

Fear and wonder are the chief elements of superstition. 
These are supplied by ignorance. Courage and composure 
come of knowledge, and grow with it. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



327 



The study of the natural sciences — including as it does, the 
habit of requiring strict proof — constantly diminishes that cre- 
dulity through which superstition enters, and on which it feeds. 
Reason and knowledge are conscious of their fallible workings; 
and therefore do they tolerate differences of opinion. They 
inspire diffidence as much as ignorance does positiveness. Nat- 
ural science has already done much to weaken and dispel 
superstition. It has put astronomy in the place of astrology, 
and made alchemy and the hunt for the " Philosopher's Stone," 
and for the "Universal Solvent," give place to Chemistry. It 
has liberated millions from their degrading bondage to the 
authority of sacred books, and left their reason as free to play 
upon the pages of the Bible as us upon the pages of any other 
book. While the mass of men construct their God out of their 
dreams and delusions, they who study the natural sciences are 
carried up through certainties to the certain God. The one 
imagine, and the other prove the existence and character of 
God. 

The religion of human nature is harmony, not only with 
human nature, but with all Nature and with God. For every 
part of Nature is harmonious with every other part of it, and 
all Nature is in harmony with the Author of all Nature. 

And what will become of the Bible when men shall cease 
to take it as an authority, and to worship it as a fetish, and to 
possess and prize it as a charm or an amulet ? Rather ask, 
what will become of it in the mean time, and during the super- 
stitious regard for it. For there is no little danger that an age 
of growing intelligence, disgusted with the exaggerated claims 
for the Bible, will reject it. But when this book shall, like 
any other book, be submitted to human judgment, and men 
feel at liberty to discriminate between the merits of its different 
parts — as, for instance, the incredible story of Jonah and the 
whale, and the felt truth of the sermon on the Mount — then 
will it be a new and inestimable blessing. 

Will there, when the priests are gone, be still a demand for 
preachers ? Yes, greater than ever ! What will they preach ? 



3 28 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



Will they, like the priests, spend the time in telling their hearers 
what religion is? Oh, no; a minute a month will suffice for 
that ! In a dozen words they can say that loving God supremely 
and the neighbor as ours elf, or more briefly, that being true to 
ourself, is religion ; or still more briefly, that being ourself is 
religion. But the question remains, What will they preach ? 
They will preach duties, they will tell their hearers what religion 
calls for in the heart and life. And what shall we do for 
churches when the present ones shall have died out with the 
priests? We shall have infinitely better; for we shall then 
have temples in which reason will do as much to enlighten and 
elevate, as superstition does in the present churches to darken 
and degrade. 

I affirm the supreme importance of religion. The next 
life is but the continuation of this ; and we begin there just 
where we leave off here. If we are upon low planes here, we 
shall enter upon low planes there. If here we sustain high 
relations to wisdom and goodness, we shall there also. — Ger- 
ritt Smith. 

Disappointment — A Teacher in God's School. 

God keeps a school for his children on earth; and one of his 
best teachers is named Disappointment. He is a rough teacher; 
severe in tone and harsh in handling, sometimes, but his tuition 
is worth all it costs us. We do not pretend to be a very apt 
learner, but many of our best lessons through life have been 
taught us by that same stern old schoolmaster, Disappointment. 

One lesson we learned was not to be selfish, or imagine 
that this world was all made for us. If it had been, the sun 
would have shone just when our hay needed curing, and the 
rains would have fallen only when our garden thirsted for water. 
But we found that God ordered things to please himself, and 
not us. And when our schemes were broken up, and our jour- 
ney spoiled by the storm, the stern schoolmaster said : " The 
world was not made for you alone. Do not be selfish. Your 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



3 2 9 



loss is another's gain. The rain that spoils your hay makes 
your neighbor's corn grow the faster. The fall in wheat that 
cuts down your profits will help the poor widow in yonder cot- 
tage to buy bread for her hungry little mouths next winter. 
Your loss is another man's gain. Don't be selfish." 

On a grand scale, sometimes, this lesson is taught. When 
a certain ambitious self-seeker once clutched at the dominion 
of all Europe, stern Disappointment met him in his path of 
invasion, flung a Russian snow-storm in his face, and out of the 
tiny snow-flakes wove a white shroud to wrap the flower of 
French chivalry. The lesson that the proud usurper would 
not learn at Aspern and Eylau was taught him in the agonies 
of Borodino, and in ghastly blood prints on the frozen banks of 
the Beresina. His successor, the third Napoleon, has been 
taught, lately, the same lesson: " All Europe does not belong 
to you." So, too, have we, in the defeat of our humbler plans 
of self-seeking, been made to hear the sharp teacher say : " Do 
not be selfish. God did not make this world just for you. 
Other people have rights as well as yourself." This lesson was 
worth all it cost us. 

A second lesson which Disappointment has taught us is, that 
our losses are not only gains, sometimes, to others, but 
very often the richest gains to ourselves. In our short-sighted 
ignorance, we had "devised a way," and set our hearts upon 
it. Had we been allowed to pursue it, we must have been led 
by it to ruin. 

The record-book of every Christian's life has some pages 
in it which were written at the bidding of that severe teacher, 
Disappointment. Tears may have blotted and blurred the page 
at the time. But as we turn over that page now, and read it 
in the light of experience, we can write beneath it : " Thank 
God for those losses ! they were my everlasting gain. Thank 
God for those bereavements ! they have saved my soul from 
being bereaved of heaven. All things work together for good 
to them that love God ; to them who are the called according 
to his purpose." 
21 



33° 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



My friend, if you and I ever reach our Father's house, we 
shall look back and see that the sharp-voiced, rough-visaged 
teacher, Disappointment, was one of the best guides to train 
us for it. He gave us hard lessons. He often used the rod. 
He often led us into thorny paths. He sometimes stripped off 
a load of luxuries ; but that only made us travel the freer and 
the faster on our heavenward way. He sometimes led us down 
into the valley of the death-shadow ; but never did the prom- 
ises read so sweetly as when spelled out by the eye of faith in 
that very valley. Nowhere did he lead us so often, or teach 
us such sacred lessons, as at the cross of Christ. Dear, old, 
rough-handed teacher ! We will build a monument to thee yet, 
and crown it with garlands, and inscribe on it : Blessed be the 
memory of Disappointment. — Rev. Theodore L. Cuykr, JV. Y. 



Spiritual Dyspeptics. 

There is a class of weak-handed and feeble-kneed professors 
in Christ's church who are self-made invalids. Their spiritual 
debility is the direct result of their own sins and short-comings. 
In their case, as in the physical hygiene, disease is the inevitable 
punishment of transgression against the laws of health. 

Is not the inebriate's bloated and poisoned frame the imme- 
diate legacy of his bottle ? Is not a shattered nervous system 
the tormenting bequest which a high-pressure career of sensu- 
ality leaves to the transgressor? The indolence which never 
earns its daily bread cannot earn the appetite to enjoy it ; the 
gluttony which gorges the stomach is but fattening an early 
banquet for the worms. Dyspepsia is only God's appointed 
health-officer, stationed at the gateway of excess, to warn off 
all who approach it, and to punish those who will persist in 
entering the forbidden ground. In like manner spiritual dis- 
ease is the inevitable result of committed sin, or neglect of 
religious duty. It requires no profound skill to detect the cause 
of Mr. A.'s dyspepsia, or Deacon B.'s spiritual palsy, or poor 
Mr. C.'s leprosy. How can a Christian be healthy who never 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



331 



works? How can a man's faith be strong whenever enters his 
closet ? How can a man's benevolence be warm who never 
gives? A want of appetite for giving always brings on a lean 
visage in the church ; but I do like to hear my neighbor M. 
pray at the monthly concert, for the fluency of devotion is 
quickened by his fluency of purse. He dares to ask God's 
help in the salvation of sinners, for he is doing his own utmost 
too. And I have known one resolute, sagacious, Christ-loving 
woman to do in a mission-school what Florence Nightingale 
did in the hospitals of Scutari ; that is, teach the nurses how 
to cure, as well as the sick how to recover. 

If this brief paragraph falls under the eye of any spiritual 
dyspeptic, let us offer him two or three familiar counsels. My 
friend, your disease and debility are your own fault, not your 
misfortune. It is not a " visitation of God," but a visitation 
of the devil, that has laid you on your back, and made you 
well-nigh useless in the church, in the Sabbath-school, and in 
every enterprise of Christian charity. Having brought on your 
own malady, you must be your own restorer, by the help of the 
divine physician. — T. L. Cuyler. 

The Fullness of God. 

What a transcendent idea that is in Paul's prayer for his 
brethren : "That ye might be filled with all the fullness of God/" 
When, therefore, we meet with a man or woman who almost 
never disappoints us ; who is always " abounding" in the work 
of the Lord ; who serves God on every day as well as the Sun- 
day; who is more anxious to be right than to be rich; and who 
can ask God's blessing on the bitterest cup ; — when we meet 
such a one, we know that down in the clefts of the soul is 
Christ, the well-spring ! 

In a thousand ways will the inward fountain of Christian 
principle make itself visible. We see it in the merchant who 
gives Christ the key of his safe, and never soils it with a single 
dirty shilling. We see it in the statesman who cares, more to 



332 



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win God's smile on his conscience than a re-election to office. 
We recognize it in the minister who is more greedy for souls 
than for salary. We see it in the young man who would rather 
endure a comrade's laugh than a Saviour's frown; in the maiden 
who obeys Christ sooner than fashion. I sometimes detect 
this well spring of cheerful piety in the patient mother, whose 
daily walk with God is a fount of holy influence amid her 
household. I know of poor men's dwellings in which grows a 
plant of contentment that is an exotic rarely found in marble 
mansions. Its leaves are green and glossy; it is fed from the 
Well. 

In dying chambers we have often heard this spiritual foun- 
tain playing, and its murmur was as musical as the tinkle of a 
brook 

" In the leafy month of June." 

Perfect love had cast out fear. Peace reigned. Joys sparkled 
in the sunlight of God's countenance. There was a well there 
which death could not dry — the " well of water springing up 
into everlasting life." — T. L. Cnyler. 

The New Religion. 

The great word of religion has always been piety. To feel 
right towards God, and to worship Him in the acceptable way, 
have always been considered the chief if not the sole duties of 
man. Docrines have been set forth and emphasized as the 
quickener and support of sentiment. Rituals have been elab- 
orated as the most fitting language and gymnastics of devotion. 
Past and penance, gorgeous rites and pomps and paraphernalia 
have been invoked to deepen and give emphasis, volume and 
articulation to the soul's worship of Deity. 

It has been almost universally held that God was infinitely 
bettei pleased with prayers addressed to Him than with silent 
discharge of duty, sweet resignation to the inevitable ordina- 
tions of nature, or the tender and helpful service of men. 
Grace at meals, an exhortation in the conference-room, an hour 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



333 



in church, a subscription to some mission or pious enterprise, 
have always been held and thought more acceptable in the sight 
of heaven than honesty in business, fidelity to private and 
public trusts, personal culture, and consecration to the noblest 
human interests and aims. Consequently Christian ethics and 
exhortations have chiefly run in pietistic grooves. The face 
has been turned skyward. The world has been looked upon 
as merely a point of departure, and the duties of man to man, 
and the sweet and holy charities of life, have been ignored or 
forgotten. This is the old religion, of which not a little still 
remains. 

Those who study carefully the significance of Christ's 
teachings and example, reading between the lines of the gos- 
pels and feeling the spirit that still animates the words that were 
written in sympathetic ink, will find that with him religion was 
chiefly if not entirely philanthropy. He did not ignore Deity, 
he identified the Father with the child, and made loving ser- 
vice of the child the truest and most acceptable worship of the 
Father. Justice, mercy, kindness, charity, forgiveness, self- 
sacrifice — these are the supreme Christian virtues. He did not 
ignore piety, but made the motive and soul of philanthropy. 
He does not forbid worship, but gives it a new and sublimer 
form in human helpfulness and uplifting. And whatever is 
done to alleviate the distress, ameliorate the condition, improve 
the morals, educate and elevate any and every class of men 
everywhere on earth, is in accordance with the principles and 
spirit of true Christianity, and part of the new religion whose 
essence is philanthropy, and whose love for God is the inspi- 
ration and result of helpful service of men. 

The old religion has kept the ground and had things pretty 
much its own way hitherto. But within fifty years what is truest 
and most central in Christianity has got expression, and now 
utters itself with new clearness and force every day. The com- 
munity has breathed in the new spirit, and its lungs dilate and 
its heart expands with the quickening influence. The age is 
beginning to glow with an enthusiasm for humanity. Never 



334 



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before was there so strong an interest in, and so deep a sym- 
pathy for, the poor suffering and the wronged. Never before 
was the work of humanity so highly prized, so honored by the 
world. No characters are so revered and loved, and have so 
strong a hold upon the hearts of the people everywhere, as 
those who have toiled and sacrificed for the good of their fellow- 
beings. The world is fast opening its eyes to the fact that 
philanthropy is the other and larger half of piety, the visible 
human side of religion, and that without it there can be no 
healthy spirituality, no saving faith, no communion with him 
who spent his life in doing good and died for his fellow men, 
nor with Him who gives Himself to his children in the bounty 
of the world and in their every breath. The faith that does not 
blossom into love of man does not spring from the Christian 
vine ; the form that does not kindle a flame of pure sympathy 
for mankind is a worse than encumbrance to true worship ; the 
sect or church that does not forget itself in sheltering the home- 
less, befriending the outcast, saving the lost, and inciting and 
inspiring its members to noblest efforts in behalf of their fellows 
and for human good, has yet to prove its right to the Christian 
name. 

And evermore this new religion must increase in power and 
influence. Already it has invaded the sects, crept into the 
churches, put a new face upon the old beliefs and liturgies, and 
extemporized methods of activity that grate upon the old sanc- 
tities as secular and strange. It is this new religion — which 
works outside of churches, which makes churches of its own, 
calling them reforms, charities, hospitals, asylums, societies, com 
missions and clubs — which is undermining the old faster than 
any of our modern infidelities, and supplanting it with a shorter, 
happier, holier, and more helpful faith. The church of the 
future will be the church of the Good Samaritan. The saints 
our children will canonize and enshrine in blessed memories, 
will be the helpers and healers of humanity. And whosoever 
giveth a cup of cold water to one athirst in the spirit of love, 
shall be counted a follower of the Son of Man. This religion, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



335 



which is piety and philanthropy both in one, is the only religion 
that has inherent vitality enough to live, or is of any use in the 
world, or can give strength and inspiration. — Theodore Tilton. 

The Sanctity of Marriage. 

In the Buddhist " Path of Virtue," it is written: " If one 
mar conquer in battle a thousand times a thousand men, and 
if another conquer himself, he is the greatest of conquerors." 
This noble form of conquest is not taught by the sophistries of 
those who would bring " instantly the millennium" by removing 
all outward restraint, not only from " the higher love of the 
spirit," bu from the free impulses of passion. Vain effort! 
Freedom would at once degenerate from license and order, 
which is " Heaven's first law," into anarchy and chaos. Psyche 
must free herself from the dominion of Venus, before she can 
arise to the abode of celestial love. Let the soul gain a strong 
and steadfast mastery over sense, and the dwelling of the gods 
is reached, albeit hedged about by the sanctions of morality 
and law. 

1 grant that legislation on this subject is imperfect. The 
law-makers of the world have in some dim sense divined the 
"heart's ideal of monogamic marriage," and have endeavored 
tc make their enactments tally with this " higher law." But 
the) have blundered : first, by creating a legal inequality 
between man and woman in marriage ; and second, by afford- 
ing too limited meam of release from it to those unendurably 
oppressed b;v this inequality, or who find by bitter experience 
that they havt wilfully or ignorantly made the fatal mistake of 
not conforming to the conditions of so intimate and sacred a 
relation. There should be a door of legal escape, and a city 
of refuge ir. public opinion, for the wrongly mated whose love- 
less lives are daily embittered by a refinement of slow torture 
that leaves no outward scar, but wrings the heart with unspeak- 
able anguish • for women who find themselves and their children 
subject to insult and injury from passionate and ferocious com- 



336 



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panions, and for women with husbands made savages and fiends 
by strong drink, who see their homes desolated and desecrated, 
their children cruelly assaulted, and are themselves exposed to 
brutal abuse, and the horrible fear of adding other helpless 
victims to the domestic holocaust. The political economist, 
and the patron of social science, should hold it an imperative 
duty to see tha* women have the means of escape from subjec- 
tion to such besotted monsters, in order that society may be 
saved from the imbecile, discordant, vicious, and murderous 
product. For all the victims of false marriages, the hand of 
Jaw should be stretched out in merciful deliverance. In view 
of their misery, how narrow and heartless is the effort on the 
part of respectable moralists to create a public sentiment 
against their lawful and honorable release — to emphasize the 
doctrine that "when once a marriage is made and consummated, 
it should be as fixed a fact as the laws of nature." 

This sweeping assertion can be made only of conjugal 
unions based on and fostered by affection, and then we may say, 
not that they " should be," but that they are by nature perma- 
nent. The trouble is, there is too little love in the world. 
In all the relations— between brothers and sisters, parents and 
children, friends and neighbors, husbands and wives — there is 
a dearth of pure affection. People do not even love them- 
selves as they ought ; if they did, they would not debase the 
temple of the spirit by sensual indulgence, but strive, " whether 
they eat or drink, or whatsoever they do," to have " the body 
sit lightly on the soul." Pythagoras controlled the instinct for 
physical gratification, aud rejected the temptation to personal 
aggrandizement, so as to live for the sake of wisdom, and his ear 
caught the music of the spheres. But too often self-love degen- 
erates into selfishness, and the higher faculties are submerged. 
When this demon presides over the conjugal relation, the angel 
of love i< banished from the hearthstone. Love is unselfish ; 
it seeks the good and happiness of the beloved object. When 
this divine principle reigns in the hearts of the wedded, the 
supreme condition of a lasting union is attained. For love is 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



337 



not a fleeting sentiment that comes and passes with the hour, 
bui an abiding presence that glorifies the object of affection, 
purifies, enlarges, and ennobles the heart in which it dwells, 
and gives its own evidence of constancy. Passion is variable, 
but love is steadfast. " Every heart prays and pines for that 
holy and protecting love which will not change." The spirit 
seeks the permanent, it lays hold on the eternal, the principles 
which are garnered in its essence are indestructible, and among 
them is holy love. When this is awakened the heart is at rest, 

" Knowing that what is excellent, 
As God lives, is permanent.' 5 

On this changeless affection is based the true marriage. 
When the wedded are discordant and wretched, it is not 
because love is inconstant, but because they do not mutually 
possess this precious treasure. Let them put away selfish- 
ness, and invite and cheris the divine guest. People fancy 
that they love. Do they seek the happiness of the adored 
object, or their own gratification? Do they treat with tender 
consideration the bodies and souls of their chosen, or neg- 
lect the courtesies and amenities, and self-denying services, and 
cordial expressions of sympathy that link friends together 
outside of marriage, and ensure lasting fraternity? Let 
love reign, and discord and desire for change will cease. 
Le love reign, and marriage will be a holy and deathless bond 
between answering souls, like that of the dual force within the 
mighty undulations of matter, named by true religion " Our 
Father and Mother God." 

For the man and woman who purely and truly love each other 
and are guided by the law of justice, marriage is not a state 
of bondage. Indeed, it is only when they become by this out- 
ward acknowledgment publicly avowed lovers, that freedom is 
realized by them in its full significance. Thereafter they can 
be openly devoted to each other's interests,, and avowedly 
chosen and intimate friends. Together they can plan life's 
battle, and enter upon the path of progress that ends not with 



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life's eventide. Together they can seek the charmed avenues 
of culture, and strengthened by each other, can brave the 
world's frown in the rugged but heaven-lit path of reform. 
Home, with all that is dearest in the sacred name, is their 
peaceful and cherished retreat, within whose sanctuary blooms 
the virtues that make it a temple of beneficence. — Mary 
Davis, 

The Heavenly Kingdom Within Us. 

This kingdom is not of the external world, neither does it 
belong exclusively to the spiritual regions. We have had the 
fair fields of the Summer Land pictured to us, and the laws of 
that spiritual realm partially revealed; we are told of the 
" Debateable Land but these wise teachers know well that 
not sun or earth or stars constitute the real spiritual kingdom. 
Its presence is within every human soul ; its certain possession 
is in the everlasting now. This life is only a peninsula of this 
kingdom ; its borders and avenues lead through the faculties 
of the human consciousness. * * . * 

There is the development of the kindly spirit, the gentle 
amenities of life, the friendships, the charities, that give us 
some glimpse of this inner kingdom ; there is love that reveals 
the inner sense, and if these fail to reveal its presence, there 
comes death. That is only one of the avenues that lead to it. 
It is much more important to know what this spiritual kingdom 
shall do for you now, than to know how much that is called 
you goes to the spiritual realm. It is vastly more important to 
know what it is doing for the world to-day, than to know if you 
shall wear the same lineaments and think the same thoughts 
there. You will surely wear your own face there and none 
other. 

The sun that shines in the Summer Land and through the 
doorways of the spiritual kingdom illumines while it does not 
burn, lights you through the darkened ways of life, and reveals 
to you the immortal possessions that are yours as a spiritual 
being. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



339 



Spiritual manifestations are the avenues through which you 
are led to this inner kingdom. Be sure you do not make light 
of them. Make a fact essential, for it is as valuable as the stars 
that shine. Neither should you over-rate them. You love to 
be astonished, to be terrified, but most you should like to know 
what message your friend brings. It is more important that 
your soul should be awakened to a consciousness of itself than 
all else. Hail with gladness all that can do that. * * 

The spiritual kingdom is not limited or confined to any 
period or epoch. You bear it with you wherever you go. It 
is to you at once prophecy and fulfillment. Without it the 
poet's song were a dream of despair ; without its love the heart 
would grow sere ; death, that mystery and fulfillment, would 
be the demon's mockery to humanity. This kingdom is not 
born of Christ, nor of any time or any religion, but of the soul's 
consciousness. It is not born of states or powers, but these 
are born of it. Man would stand a mad idiot, a wild thing, 
without this supernal kingdom within. 

You that have heard its voice, that have watched your own 
inner consciousness, know that your soul is greater than time, 
death and all that comes to you. The soul is greater than the 
body, because in it every possibilty is enshrined ; within it are 
the silent manifestations of the Deity. There are your Franklins, 
your Kanes, and many more that will risk everything to find 
out what open sea lies near the north pole. Livingston has 
been dead many times in Africa, and is not afraid of the many 
deaths, that he may know what lies in that unknown land and 
what people inhabit its unexplored countries. Man lives on 
earth to-day to conquer ; to wrest from her bosom, scarred by 
the fierce contests of nature, the secret of life. The time shall 
come when every force shall be subjected to man. 

Does this prove the soul's empire is only in matter ? It is 
because the soul is supreme, the spirit greater than matter, that 
man is not afraid of heat or cold, of summer or winter. This 
soul tnat is afraid of nothing — shall it be afraid of immortality? 
Nothing less than a universe will satisfy its longings. As 



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the poet calls not all his soul out in one song, as he that is 
inspired breathes not out all his life in one inspiration, but says 
till eternity there shall be more songs, more inspirations, so the 
soul can only sing the supreme song and yet know diviner ones 
still are to be breathed out. The song that is in you to sing, sing 
it, and the work that is in you to do, do it. Bind up the broken 
heart, and to-morrow there comes a bird fluttering at your 
window, and brings back your song with a diviner note. Yon- 
der is a spirit well-nigh dead by sadness ; comfort it, lift it up, 
strengthen it, and next year more sad souls shall come to you 
and you shall be glad that you were born. This is what the 
spiritual kingdom can do within you. In the center of your 
kingdom sits your soul. There will abide those sacred prayers 
and saintly thoughts that have come from the minds within 
your kingdom. There will be your fellows in love and hope, 
and aspiration, and all around shall be the families of your 
kingdom, and the bond between you shall be love, and the law 
shall be love, and the kingdom shall be to you greater than all 
the world, with its principalities and powers. — Cora L. V. 
Tappan. 



Liberty. 

The aim of the people is liberty. In every corner of the 
known earth, at this day, the cry is "liberty." Liberty for the 
body ; liberty for the soul. The cry has gone forth. That 
thought stimulates every brain and every heart. Hence, from 
before every pulpit, around the desk of every writer, the cry 
comes, "Liberty for the soul." 

Oh, Mystery ! thou art indeed the mother of the abomina- 
tions of the earth. Can there be truth and mystery together ? 
Is it a possibility that God's works, if he be our Father, shall 
be a mystery to us, his children ? There is no mystery save 
your own ignorance, and your submission or tyranny one to 
another. All the wonders of the Almighty's gospel have 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



341 



unrolled themselves in the light of knowledge, or are now 
becoming manifest to the investigating spirit of man. 

The vail of mystery being lifted discloses the fact that the 
Almighty is the God of the living, not the God of the dead ; 
that the living are his ministering spirits ; that they can and do 
come to earth ; that they are the ministers of light and knowl- 
edge, who, in all ages of the world, have gone forth to minister 
to the heirs of salvation. 

Progress is a portion of the eternal gospel of nature, which 
the ages tell ; which the history of all nations teaches ; which 
the advance of every art and every science indicates • which 
the history of the planets, suns, and stars proclaims ; which 
man himself spells out from the cradle to the grave, in a per- 
petual series of progressive experiments, each one leading to 
the culminating point when his spirit is set free, to put in prac- 
tice the results of the follies, the trespasses, the hopes, the 
wishes, the aspirations which he has gained in his earthly 
career. — Emma Hardinge. 

Sanctity of Maternity. 

The Romish Church has acted upon a true instinct in 
making Mary illustrious among women. Art, a far truer system 
than Papacy, has done the same thing. She has been one of 
the grandest and most fruitful Inspirations — the typical mother 
and child multiplied in various forms for the eyes and souls of 
all women, saying to them, " Go thou and do likewise." And 
the universal human heart, even though blind and cold, pays a 
certain involuntary homage to the mothers whose children have 
acted the Christ-part in their generation. 

Spirituality magnifies maternity, sees its real glory, and 
rejoices in it, as never other sovereign rejoiced in her earthly 
crown and scepter. It gives the mother at once pride and 
humility — pride, in her great office, though a manger be its 
cradle— humility, in herself as an instrument in the Divine hand 
for its accomplishment. " Behold the handmaid of the Lord ; 



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be it unto me according to thy law. My soul doth magnify the 
Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God, my Saviour. For he 
hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden ; for, behold, 
from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he 
that is mighty hath done to me great things ; and holy is his 
name." This is the language of every true spiritual mother. 

We acknowledge with unstinted speech and feeling, the 
fullness of the Holy Spirit in the mother; and have a wor- 
shipful feeling toward her, as its pure, responsive recipient ; a 
feeling which all mothers command in the degree that they are 
pure, divine, and aspiring, in maternity. — Eliza W. Farnham, 

Wise Reverence for Motherhood. 

The Christian Church, considering the birth of Jesus excep- 
tional in all respects, has never discovered the philosophy of 
the fact that Joseph "knew not" Mary from the hour when the 
announcement of the new life was made till the birth of the 
child ; nor has the medical profession discovered, or, if dis- 
covered, has not taught the imperative necessity of such 
condition to secure to motherhood that undisturbed operation 
of the forces within her body, and the passivity of mind which 
are vitally important to her own well-being and that of her 
offspring. When "the harp of a thousand strings" is attuned 
to a new key by the unfoldment of a new life within itself, every 
string is thrilled with exquisite vibration, either of delight or 
torture. Shall any soul save the owner dictate what hands shall 
sweep its chords? Whether they shall receive impulse from any? 
Or whether, like the iEolian harp, it shall, all untouched by 
mortal hands, vibrate only to the celestial harmonies which ever 
wait upon the incarnation of the soul in human form ? * * 

The fundamental truth of the duty of motherhood to make 
itself an intelligent instrument of creative power, and to pro- 
vide, suitable ante-natal conditions, and suitable provisions for 
the rearing of offspring after birth, and to subordinate every 
form of selfishness to its demands, is hardly thought of, still 
less appreciated. * * * 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



343 



We cannot behold the grandeur of manhood till it is born 
of and through an enlightened, self-poised motherhood. I 
desire and shall labor to extricate woman from a deeper mire 
of helplessness than legal disability. From that she should 
also be freed, to secure freedom in all relations ; but she wants, 
first, courage to assert the right to her own body as the instru- 
ment of reason and conscience, and the fulfilment of the 
function of motherhood, subject to no authority but the voice 
of God in her soul. * * * * 

O Christian mothers ! who look for the coming of that 
state of peace and good-will which was heralded by the earthly 
advent of Jesus, can you hope for its consummation so long 
as mother-souls stamp upon unborn offsping the impulse of 
murder? That undisturbed maternity which brought into fleshly 
existence the Prince of Peace, must obtain in human society 
before it can be free from the polluting tendencies, the dis- 
cordant and warring elements, which deform and blight human- 
ity. All the traditions of the past, before Jesus, enforce the 
same idea of the office of undisturbed maternity. The saviours 
of different forms of religion, preceding Christianity, were also 
immaculate conceptions, bora of God and motherhood. This 
is a truth of deeper than theological import— a vital and 
indispensable necessity for the salvation of humanity. Moth- 
erhood should be a shrine unpolluted by one touch of selfishness 
and lust. O woman ! this would and will be thy recompense 
for all the sufferings and agonies which pertain to physical 
womanhood and motherhood. * * * 

Now, if by reason of irresistable desire, the body can be 
stamped ineffaceably, and the powers of mentality be developed 
so wonderfully, can it be a question that upon the moral nature, 
the more highly spiritual tablet, impressions as deeply graven 
and ineffaceable will be recorded? Such being the fact, what 
is the first duty of motherhood ? Where has God written a 
law more clearly or imperatively than in the power of mater- 
nity over offspring ? A power which cannot be hindered in 
its operation, either for good or ill. Where, then, does any 



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other relation find justification for interference with its sacred 
function? Where does womanhood find justification for neg- 
lecting to claim for it that condition of purity which is its first 
necessity ? Is it cause for marvel that the education which has 
taught that submission to the unguided passion of man is one 
of the most laudable wifely virtues, and the hindrance of moth- 
erhood consequent upon this outrage of the sacred office, should 
result in spiritual monstrosites ? Till woman comprehends her 
duty and responsibility as the creative instrument, to secure 
the best conditions and work intelligently according to her 
highest knowledge and convictions, diseased and passion-tossed 
natures will continue to fester upon society ; and till she edu- 
cates her sons, in tender infancy and during growing boyhood, 
to the truth that manhood is responsible to the same moral 
obligations and is equally degraded by the same impurities as 
womanhood, and thus revolutionizes the now false standard of 
a sliding scale of morals for our sex, and asks as strong con- 
demnation for the sins of one as the other, we shall continue 
to have occasion to blush for the debased libels upon true 
manliness which now disfigure society. But I pray you be 
not dismayed, nor resign yourself to inaction, because the dis- 
order seems so inextricable. There is no wrong but shall be 
done aw r ay, unless evil instead of good is almighty. Look at 
the change accomplished in the degree of enlightenment, the 
tone of sentiment, the possibility of reaching the minds of 
people by instructive teaching in various forms, within a quarter 
of a century just past. Man has done his work in searching 
out and setting forth the physiological laws w r hich bear upon 
the relation of marriage and parentage. His teaching, together 
with the deteriorating health of American women, has aroused 
the intellect of both sexes. The teachings of phrenology and 
physiology have prepared the way for higher and deeper teach- 
ings pertaining to the laws of parentage. * * * 

The practice of infanticide is becoming one of the crying 
evils of our time, and there is but the alternative of an unde- 
signed and undesired maternity, at which the soul of the mother 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 345 

not only shrinks, but stands outraged, and which has, through 
centuries past, entailed upon humanity the unhappiness and 
misery recorded — or a free, unhindered, God-inspired mother- 
hood. 

* * * The Infinite Patience has waited through the ages 
for the human mind to grow into an appreciation of principles, 
and out of the sphere and dominion of animal appetites. Let 
us imitate that patience and work faithfully for the truth 
that is revealed to us. The protest of the great army of 
the outraged and desecrated motherhood of the past wails 
adown the ages, and transforms itself into an appeal to every 
woman's soul to claim for posterity the rights of its orifice to 
work with God in that empire which cannot be shared, and 
should not be interfered with, by any relation. The creative 
function has a dominion all its own, spiritually as well as phys- 
ically. Here God and motherhood should be the holy of holies. 
Selfishness has no right to lift the veil. Teach thy daughter 
that in this sphere she is, by -every consideration of her own 
well-being and that of her offspring, ruler supreme. We have 
a literature which may aid and instruct, but there is no power 
which can, with the knowledge, impart an elevated tone of feel- 
ing, no method which can so effectually preserve the purity of 
the tablet while it receives the impress of knowledge, as 
familiar converse with the holy mother-heart. Be courageous 
then, O woman, and bequeath to the future the qualities, by 
transmission, and the knowledge, by instruction, which shall lift 
it out of the dominion of appetite and selfishness, that we may 
rejoice finally in the redemption of motherhood and the salva- 
tion of humanity. — Mrs. L. B. Chandler. 

Woman's true Position. 

There is nothing of greater importance to the well-being of 
society at large— of man as well as woman — than the true and 
proper position of woman. 

This subject has claimed my earnest interest for many years. 
I have long wished to see woman occupying a more elevated 
22 



346 



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position than that which custom for ages has allotted to her. 
The kind of homage that has been paid to woman, the flatter- 
ing appeals which have too long satisfied her — appeals to her 
mere fancy and imagination — are giving place to a more 
extended recognition of her rights, her important duties and 
responsibilities in life. Woman is claiming for herself stronger 
and more profitable food. The increasing attention to female 
education, the improvement in the literature of the age, are 
among the proofs of a higher estimate of woman in society at 
large. Therefore we may hope that the intellectual and intel- 
ligent are being prepared for the discussion of this question, in 
a manner which shall tend to ennoble woman and dignify man. 

Free discussion upon this, as upon all other subjects, is 
never to be feared ; nor will it be, except by such as prefer 
darkness rather than light. It was sound philosophy uttered 
by Jesus, " He that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his 
deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God." 

This age is notable for its works of mercy and benevolence, 
for the efforts that are made to reform the inebriate and the 
degraded, to relieve the oppressed and the suffering. Women 
as well as men are interested in these works of justice and 
mercy. They are efficient co-workers, their talents are called 
into profitable exercise, their labors are effective in each 
department of reform. The blessing to the merciful, to the 
peacemaker, is equal to man and to woman. It is greatly to 
be deplored, now that she is increasingly qualified for useful- 
ness, that any view should be presented calculated to retard 
her labors of love. 

Why should not woman seek to be a reformer ? If she is 
to shrink from being such an inconoclast as shall "break the 
image of man's lower worship," as so long held up to view; if 
she is to fear to exercise her reason, and her noblest powers, 
lest she should be thought to " attempt to act the man/' and 
not "acknowledge his supremacy;" if she is to be satisfied 
with the narrow sphere assigned her by man, nor aspire to a 
higher, lest she should transcend the bounds of female delicacy; 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



347 



truly it is a mournful prospect for woman. We would admit 
all the difference that our great and beneficent Creator has made 
in the relation of man and woman, nor would we seek to disturb 
that relation ; but we deny that the present position of woman 
is her true sphere of usefulness; nor will she attain to this 
sphere, until the disabilities and disadvantages, religious, civil, 
and social, which impede her progress, are removed out of her 
way. These restrictions have enervated her mind and paralysed 
her powers. 

So far from her ambition leading her to attempt to act the 
man, she needs all the encouragement she can receive, by the 
removal of obstacles from her path, in order that she may 
become a true woman. As it is desirable that man should act 
a manly and generous part, not " mannish," so let woman be 
urged to exercise a dignified and womanly bearing, not 
"womanish." Let her cultivate all the graces and proper 
accomplishments of her sex, but let not these degenerate into 
a kind of effeminacy, in which she is satisfied to be the mere 
plaything or toy of society, content with her outward adorn- 
ings, and with the tone of flattery and fulsome adulation too 
often addressed to her. True, nature has made a difference 
in her configuration, her physical strength, her voice, &c. — and 
we ask no change, we are satisfied with nature. But how have 
neglect and mismanagement increased this difference ! It is 
our duty to develope these natural powers by suitable exercise, 
so that they may be strengthened by reason of use. In the 
ruder state of society woman is made to bear heavy burdens 
while her " lord and master" walks idly by her side. In the 
civilization to which we have attained, if cultivated and refined 
woman would bring all her powers into use, she might engage 
in pursuits which she now shrinks from as beneath her proper 
vocation. The energies of men need not then be wholly 
devoted to the counting house and common business of life, in 
order that women in fashionable life may be supported in their 
daily promenades and nightly visits to the theater and ball- 
room. 



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Nor will woman fulfill less her domestic relations, as the 
faithful companion of her chosen husband and the fitting 
mother of her children, because she has a right estimate of her 
position and her responsibilities. Her self-respect will be 
increased ; preserving the dignity of her being, she will not 
suffer herself to be degraded into a mere dependant. Nor will 
her feminine character be impaired. Instances are not few of 
woman throwing off the incumbrances which bind her, and going 
forth in a manner worthy of herself, her creation, and her dig- 
nified calling. Did Elizabeth Fry lose any of her feminine 
qualities by the public walk into which she was called ? Having 
performed the duties of a mother to a large family, feeling that 
she owed a labor of love to the poor prisoner, she was 
empowered by Him who sent her forth to go to the kings and 
crowned heads of the earth, and ask audience of these ; and 
it was granted her. Did she lose the delicacy of woman by 
her acts? No. Her retiring modesty was characteristic of her 
to the latest period of her life. It was my privilege to enjoy 
her society some years ago, and I found all that belonged to 
the feminine in woman — to true nobility, in a refined and puri- 
fied moral nature. Is Dorothea Dix throwing off her womanly 
nature and appearance in the course she is pursuing ? In find- 
ing duties abroad, has any " refined man felt that something 
of beauty has gone forth from her?" Is she compromising 
her womanly dignity in going forth to seek to better the condi- 
tion of the insane and afflicted ? Is not a beautiful mind and 
a retiring modesty still conspicuous in her ? 

Indeed, I would ask, if this modesty is not attractive also, 
when manifested in the other sex ? The retiring modesty of 
William Ellery Channing was beautiful, as well as many others, 
who filled elevated stations in society. These virtues, differ- 
ing as they may in degree in man and woman, are of the same 
nature, and call forth our admiration wherever manifested. 

The noble courage of Grace Darling is justly honored, 
leading her to present herself on the coast of England, during 
the raging storm, in order to rescue the poor, suffering, ship- 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



349 



wrecked mariner. Woman was not wanting in courage in the 
early ages. In war and bloodshed even, this trait was often 
displayed. The courage of Joan of Arc is made the subject 
of popular lectures. But more noble moral daring is marking 
the female character at the present time, and better worthy of 
imitation. As these characteristics come to be appreciated in 
man too, his warlike acts, with all the miseries and horrors of 
the battle-ground, will sink into their merited oblivion, or be 
remembered only to be condemned. The heroism diplayed in 
the tented field must yield to the moral and Christian heroism 
which is shadowed in the signs of our times. 

Who knows but that if woman acted her part in govern- 
mental affairs, there might be an entire change in the turmoil 
of political life. It becomes man to speak modestly of his 
ability to act without her. If woman's judgment were exer- 
cised, why might she not aid in making the laws by which she 
is governed ? Lord Brougham remarked that the works of Har- 
riet Martineau upon Political Economy were not excelled by 
those of any political writer of the present time. The first 
few chapters of her "Society in America," her views of a 
Republic, and of government generally, furnish evidence of 
woman's capacity to embrace subjects of universal interest. 

When, in the diffusion of light and intelligence, a conven- 
tion shall be called to make regulations for self-government on 
Christian principles, I can see no good reason why women 
should not participate in such an assemblage, taking part 
equally with man. 

Let woman then go on — not asking favors, but claiming as 
a right the removal of all hindrances to her elevation in the 
scale of being. Let her receive encouragement for the proper 
cultivation of all her powers, so that she may enter profitably 
into the active business of life ; employing her own hands in 
ministering to her necessities, strengthening her physical being 
by proper exercise, and observance of the laws of health. Let 
her not be ambitious to display a fair hand, and to promenade 
the fashionable streets of our city, but rather coveting earnestly 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



the best gifts, let her strive to occupy such walks in society as 
will befit her true dignity in all the relations of life. No fear 
that she will then transcend the proper limits of female deli- 
cacy. True modesty will be as fully preserved in acting out 
those important vocations, as in the nursery or at the fireside 
ministering to man's self-indulgence. Then in the marriage 
union the independence of the husband and wife will be 
equal, their dependence mutual, and their obligations recipro- 
cal. — Lucretia Mott. 

Spiritual Teachings. 

Man is a myriad-stringed instrument, facing every point of 
the infinite radius, and able to receive and repeat all the har- 
monies of the universe. His bosom contains the germs of all 
conceivable grace, personal perfection, and spiritual beauty. 
The glory of sun and stars is eclipsed by the glory of that 
reason, of that soul that can weigh and measure sun and star. 

The way of life is wonderful ; it proceeds by abandonment 
to the currents of eternal power. Tendencies are streams of 
power setting into us from the eternal deeps of Spiritual Being, 
and indicate at once the duties and destinies of the times. 

Man is found to be the divinest creation on the planet. 
The idea of man is rising. He is no longer to be controlled 
by institutions. They are made for him, not he for them. It 
is the age of spiritual and political liberty, because it is the 
age of spiritual inspiration. 

Let us no longer distrust our spiritual powers. Let us no 
longer be enslaved with these external things ; let us use them, 
and not let them use us ; and remember it is only when in the 
higher moments of our interior life we do consciously feel the 
surges of the everlasting nature, that we can realize the sweet 
and holy significance of immortal life. 

— The rays of man's selfish intellectuality fall on the soul like 
moonbeams reflected from an iceberg ; only to freeze the germs 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



351 



of our spiritual affections, which yearn to be ingulfed in divine 
love and beauty. 

— All substance and power is one, or no universe could arise 
out of them. Hence man is the autocrat of creation. He 
carries, sheathed within his flesh, the potent secret of all things. 

Man fronts two worlds at once ; with something of the ani- 
mal and something of the angel in him. He belongs to 
substance, yet lives amid the shadows ; he lives in the world of 
forms, while the eternal perfections of which these forms are 
symbols live in him ; he sees the symbols with his eyes, but he 
feels the divine verities signified with his spirit. 

— But there is no permanent element of wealth but truth, 
justice, love, wisdom — the eternal verities of the soul and of 
God. It is not what we do, it is not our history, that makes 
us divine — it is what we are, and what we are to be forever. 

— There is no middle ground between natural religious 
inspiration and the great spiritual idea. The farthest star sends 
jts beams down into our world, and celestial chemistry picks 
them to pieces, and ascertains thereby the constituents of dis- 
tant suns. So with the light of immortal life. Its idea, an 
intuition in us, is the eternal recognition of the far-fallen beams 
of celestial being — of Spiritual life. Intuition of the spiritual 
and divine is the spontaneous spiritual chemistry of the soul. 
There are no " discrete degrees" in nature between "matter" 
and "spirit;" there is no qualitative chasm or vacuum over 
which, from either side, influences cannot pass. 

The expanded earth and unfolded heavens are manifesta- 
tions of an Eternal Spirit. The rocks, hills, valleys, rivers, 
ocean, and stars gleam with the white splendors of the Divine 
Reason. The Spiritual idea of substance is arising from 
science. All bodies are now proved to be only petrified forms 
of force ; all forces are proved, by their mutual transformability, 
to be only modes of the action of some common, simple, homo- 
geneous, invisible or spiritual Power ; and all power is eternal, 
infinite and divine. For how could man receive life, power, 
substance, light, heat, gravitation, electricity, beauty, and wis- 



35 2 



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dom, if he were not composed at bottom of substance, and 
power, and law, one and identical with these ? 

If the solid rocks we tread had not, by the laws of disin- 
tegration and organization, ascended into the composition of 
the human structure, geology would be a sealed book, an 
impossible study to man. If the star-beam had never been 
wrought up into the composition of your baby in the cradle, 
he would never in his manhood see these glimmers through the 
midnight air. If the sunlight had never kissed itself into the 
structural intelligence of your boy, he never would know of its 
existence, or feel its warmth, or recognize its beauty and power. 
How can that which is spirit, if it be totally different from 
matter, as some have supposed, be connected with matter? 
What law exists between two unlike and opposite substances, 
which, as a chain, can unite these two extremes ? 

Therefore I say unto you, the substance of the world is the 
intelligence in the world ; and that intelligence is revealed pri- 
marily, not to, but in man. Wherefore, revelation is of two 
kinds — objective and subjective ; or external and phenomenal, 
and interior and substantial. Now what is inspiration ? Is it 
not the cognition by the personal soul of the existence and 
flow of the Eternal ? It cometh from the relation of the per- 
sonal to the impersonal, of the relative to the absolute, of the 
dependent to the independent, of the shadow to the substance. 

— The aim of science should be to fathom those hidden, 
secret, invisible forces, of which the suns and stars are the 
merest precipitations and residue. If there be a God, then 
" matter" is but spiritual sediment; "suns" are only shadows 
of eternal Reason ; so that the spirit in Nature and in man is 
the only permanent, solid and enduring substance. 

—The fraternity of souls and the paternity of God rest at 
last on the identity of the original substance of each being. If 
human spirits are the children of God — if the idea of the 
fatherhood of God be not a delusion — -then the substance of 
the Creator is the foundation of each soul. Yea, the identity 
of the primordial essence of the human and the Divine Spirit, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



353 



is the only logical basis ; and it is on this foundation alone that 
religion itself is possible. 

— For if God be Spirit and Infinite there is no room for 
any other substance than spirit. Spirit is the primordial Power 
at the center, and the original substance at the foundation of 
the world. Personality, therefore, cannot be predicated of a 
Boundless Being, of the Infinite Beneficence. Individuality is, 
necessarily, relative and dependent, and pre-supposes the abso- 
lute and independent, which is Infinite Spirit, eternal law. But 
Infinite Spirit is absolute, not relative; is independent, not 
limited. 

—The spiritual philosophy has facts by the million — facts 
which appeal to every possible condition of mind, from the 
most sensuous to the most spiritual-minded ; while for the deep 
and intuitive thinker it has the most transcendent and spiritual 
ideas. The unlettered can be surprised by the movement of a 
table without contact of visible power ; while under the inspi- 
ration of the gifted seer and poet, the great fields of eternal day 
break on our wrapt vision. It opens on the one hand the great 
question of physiological psychology, and on the other, the 
profound questions of transcendental theology. Hence it 
promises to reach all the world and every soul thereof. It is the 
democracy of religion and of philosophy combined. It is the 
Catholicism of Rationalism, with a fact, an idea, a reason, and 
a symbol, for every possible mood of man. In bridging over 
the grave, it connects the poorest barefooted, ragged child of 
earth — whose kindred watch him from the homes of the pure 
and the free, weeping when he strays, and rejoicing when he 
returns to the true path — with the highest archangel of the 
Summer Land. 

— Demonstrate the naturalness of spiritual forces and laws, 
and the realm of the divine is brought within reach of science. 
Science may then push its discoveries up into the immortal 
world; may, must link the two worlds together in the bonds 
of a scientific as well as sacred fellowship, and so banish all hob- 



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goblins, all ghosts, all superstitions, and all senseless religious 
fanaticism from the world. 

— When we perceive the unity of nature ; when we regard 
the mutual transformability of bodies, and of all forces; when 
we discover in the analyzed sunbeam and star-beam the ele- 
ments which have been precipitated and hardened into rocks, 
and coal, and iron, and other metals ; when we behold every- 
where the reign of the same invisible power, ever changing in 
form, but ever the same in esse — the soul is carried on and on 
in the tide of inspiration, up to the same great central concep- 
tion that spirit " is all, and in all." 

Substance is necessarily eternal; phenomena necessarily 
limited in time and space. Induction deals only with shadows; 
deals only with form, not substance ; deals only with phenom 
enalities. The universe swings between these two vortices : 
First, downward and outward, into forms of appearance; second, 
upward and inward, into thought, into consciousness, into 
eternal Light. 

Does any one suppose that men first inferred that there was 
such a thing as love by induction ? No ! the human heart 
loves as spontaneously as the the bird sings, because it cannot 
help it. 

— Nature is a unity — an undivided empire; and to him 
who affirms the God in it, there is no escape from the spiritual 
fraternity of all things, and of all spheres of being. Spiritual 
Communion is the glorious flower of all religious experience ; 
the answer to all prayer ; the ultimate of all study, the goal of 
all science and scholarship. Spirit is the foundation of all 
things ; continued inspiration from God the one condition of 
all life, high and low, and hence communion with Nature, 
universal. There is no world too fine for the spirit in man ; 
no angel too pure to work for us earthlings ; and no spiritual 
aristocracy allowable in this God's world. 

Believe me, brethren, there is a grander world than that in 
which these shadows dance across the sensible horizon ; there 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



355 



is a diviner life, a serener consciousness, a more golden condi- 
tion, than that of the body and its relations to the world. 

— Spiritualism is the only resort of all Christian progressives, 
who hold on to the idea of God, and to the possibility of a 
natural divine life ; and Atheism is the only resort of all those 
who cannot so hold on. Just where Spiritualism differs from 
Theology it agrees with the religion of Jesus. It is alive, fresh, 
spontaneous, progressive. But what is the genius, spirit, scope 
of the great Spiritual Movement ? What are its ideas, methods, 
sources of power, and aims ? Is it all confined to the fact of 
intercourse between the two worlds ? Nay, far from it. He who 
accepts the fact of spiritual intercourse, must take all that goes 
logically with that fact as part of the truth of the whole move- 
ment. 

Spiritualism shows how the career of a soul in this life 
affects its condition in the next. Is it not proper, then, for it 
to deal with the conditions of this life ? We felt that the min- 
istering angels of the spiritual world inspired and pushed 
us on to the work, as well as the deep voice of our inmost 
spiritual nature. Our aim is the attainment of that "perfection 
and truthfulness of mind which is the secret intention of 
Nature." Verily, our aim is too large to admit a creed or sect. 
We hold that the "chief end of man" is the highest and most 
harmonious development of all the powers of life to a complete 
and consistent whole. 

■ — The gospel of this epoch is for progress — for the enfran- 
chisement of woman, and her admission, on terms of equality 
with man, to all the rights, privileges, and immunities of life. 
It demands justice to all classes of citizens. It calls on govern- 
ment to make all equal before the law. It opens itself to 
science and philosophy, and all truth, from every quarter of 
the globe. While in religion the advent of the Spiritual Dis- 
pensation, emancipating millions in our own land as well as in 
Europe, the decay of the Papal hierarchy, and the revival of the 
spirit of Art, and its consecration to Nature, attests the immense 



35^ 



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activity and spiritual energy of this century. All these facts 
are the sure signs of coming benefits. 

Supernaturalism is now rapidly sinking into hopeless 
decrepitude and remediless decay. Under the influence of 
liberal scholarship, free thought, fearless criticism, and the 
great Spiritual Movement, joined with the late discoveries in 
science, popular theology is being actually destroyed. 

Behold, the seventh great religious revolution of the world 
is upon us. Brahminism, Buddhism, Judaism, Classicalism, 
Mohammedanism, and even modern Christianity, are, regarding 
their claims, only failures. All have failed to save man from 
ignorance, crime, war, slavery and woe. Now the race advances, 
either to Atheism or to a universal Spiritualism. — Selden J. 
Finney. 

The " Free Religious " Movement. 

Let us not be misunderstood. We are not brought to affirm 
the indifference of religions : still less are we tempted to assert 
their equality in dignity or worth. That some are nobler than 
others is a fact too evident to be overlooked. One is leaf, 
another blossom, another fruit. Indeed, to compare them is 
less easy than to contrast them. Strung along in a line from 
the world's infancy to its maturity, they represent the stages of 
the world's growth. The sentiment of the Infinite is the crea- 
tive source of them all. But that sentiment, how variably is it 
blended ! It may be found somewhere to exist as pure senti- 
ment, unmixed with intellect. The religions of India combine 
sentiment with fancy. The religions of the Semitic race are a 
combination of sentiment with moral sense. In China the 
sentiment has a large infusion of the filial, domestic, and 
ancestral spirit. We need not hesitate to say, that Christianity 
is the crowning glory of religions thus far ; but we must not 
turn a deaf ear to eulogiums which other faiths receive from 
their adherents. The Christian claims that his religion is the 
religion of the highest races, and the most developed civiliza- 
tions. He declares that it associates the religious sentiment 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



357 



with the greatest number of regal powers, with the most sym- 
pathy, conscience, intelligence and imagination; that its theology 
is the grandest piece of speculative construction yet achieved ; 
its churches the noblest monuments of organized feeling and 
purpose yet erected ; its cultus the most complete expression 
of the heart's desire, the most comprehensive ministration to 
its need yet devised ; that its sacred books are, as a whole, so 
much richer than those of any other faith, that they are not 
altogether unworthy to be called "The Bible." In the purity 
of „ its moral standard ; the sublimity of its moral ideal ; the 
spendor of its cardinal virtues; the sweetness of its spiritual 
graces' ; the strength of its upward-soaring wing ; the tender- 
ness of its human regards ; its skilful blending of judgment 
and grace ; the awfulness of its abysses ; the transcendency of 
its heights ; the vastness of its pictorial representations ; the 
magnificence of the frescoes with which it has covered the ada- 
mantine walls of the world ; the softness of its angels ; the 
terror of its fiends ; the domestic qualities of its Godhead, 
Father, Mother, and Child ; the stateliness of its drama of 
redemption, whose stage is the heaven-canopied universe, whose 
scenes are the epochs of history, whose dramatis persona are 
all created beings, nay, the uncreated Being himself, — in these, 
and in a hundred respects besides, Christianity, in the view of 
its disciples, is the queen of faiths. 

But the older faiths of India, Persia, China, Judea, speak 
of their glories and superiorities, too, as rapturously as 
this faith does. And if we look forward, measuring by the 
rule of present intelligence, we see those who regard Chris- 
tianity as very imperfect. 

Is Christianity the full and final faith ? Does it satisfy phi- 
losophy? Does it exhaust feeling? Is it synonymous with 
reason ? It is a gorgeous romance. Is it a complete story of 
the heart's life ? Is it even poetry for the modern imagination ? 
Does it satisfy the dreams of the mature world ? Is it our 
Tennyson, or our Browning? Our George Eliot, or even our 
Charles Dickens ? Is it open to no criticism ? What state- 



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ment will you make of it that commands general assent ? When 
Mr. Abbott says Christianity culminates in Romanism, every 
Protestant nostril dilates with scorn. When Protestantism 
unfolds its scheme, the Liberals shake their heads. The Lib- 
erals produce their interpretation, and an audible smile ripples 
over the countenance of the by-standers. India is ready to 
welcome Christ, Keshub Chunder Sen declares ; but it can 
make nothing of the system of dogmas that bears his name. 
Philosophy looks on Christianity, and says : "Yes, it is very 
impressive as a fact in history, very imposing as an institution, 
very beautiful as a demonstration of sentiment, very sonorous 
as an example of rhetoric, very superb as a piece of art, a 
master-work of architecture, painting, and song; but before an 
advanced intelligence can accept it, there must be important 
modifications. The dogmas must be restated, the definitions 
revised, the histories rewritten, the traditions recast. All its 
theories must be reconsidered, its views of human nature, 
human life, human destiny. Its Bible must be expurgated, its 
worship spiritualized, its cultus adapted to actual needs. Nay, 
its standard of virtue is open to objection, its graces do not 
sit altogether gracefully on modern men." In fact, this highest 
form of religion is less supreme in its domain than the lower 
forms are in theirs. It does not answer social or intellectual 
calls. * * * * * * 

How much more natural is it to say that the soul 
grows its beliefs ; that they answer to the stages of its devel- 
opment, correspond to its moods of feeling, conform to the 
soil and atmosphere which it supplies. The Bibles are the 
soul uttering its deepest convictions ; the worships are the soul 
aspiring ; the creeds are the soul believing ; the churches are 
the soul associating its powers of sympathy ; the prophets are 
the preaching soul ; the priests are the sanctifying soul ; the 
saints are the soul consecrated ; inspiration is a deep breath of 
spiritual air • revelation is the uncovering of the world's mean- 
ing, the dropping of scales from the eye, the look behind 
the veil, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



359 



Regarded thus, religion is not an impression made by 
God on the heart of his child, but rather an expression of the 
child's heart towards God ; and the religions of the world are 
less truly regarded as voices out of the eternal silence, than as 
voices sent i?ito the eternal silence. * * * 

• The Free Religionist affirms the supremacy of the religious 
sentiment, and its inexhaustible vitality. The splendor of its 
past performances justifies the hope of other performances 
equally timely and noble in the times before us. He does not 
propose to make a muddle of religions, to reduce them to a 
minimum, and accept a residuum of carbonic in place of the 
diamond. It is not his plan to strike an average among the 
world's faiths. He makes the highest pledge of a higher. He 
does what the liberal believers in all the sects are doing ; but 
he does it in obedience to a larger law. 

Let me venture to state a few of the first principles which 
are suggested by our position in the general religious world. 

It is the traditional view that religion, belonging to the 
supernatural sphere, comes down upon the human mind to 
control it. 

It is the rational view that, the sphere of the supernatural 
being included in the compass of the mind, religion is one of 
the mind's expressions. 

It is usually taught that the founders of religions were either 
divine beings, or human beings miraculously taught. 

We teach that the founders of religions were exalted types 
of human nature. 

The common belief is, that religion necessarily comes with 
miracle. 

Our belief implies that religion comes by due process of 
spiritual preparation and unfolding. 

The elders said, the Sovereign Wisdom broods over men, 
disclosing itself from time to time, and demanding obedience 
to its dictations. 

We say, the Sovereign Wisdom is disclosed within men in 
proportion as they enlarge their intelligence. 



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Tradition runs, that God stands to the world as the potter 
to the clay. 

Our faith runs, that the divine forces are manifest in and 
through the organic universe. 

It is an old persuasion that God makes himself known in 
his ways, attributes, and intentions. 

It is our persuasion that no knowledge of him is exact, and 
that all we have our faculties procure for us. 

We grew up to think that Jesus exhausted the capacities of 
human nature. 

We have come to think that Jesus expressed the sentimental 
side of human nature alone, leaving it philosophical side in the 
shadow. 

It is the common faith that man is an exile seeking a home 
beyond the grave, to which religion introduces him. 

It is our faith that man is at home here, and that religion 
tells him how beautiful and noble his home may become. 

It is the old idea that man is in bondage to sin. 

It is the new idea that sin is imperfection and may be 
outgrown. 

The religion of the day prescribes a form of cultus. 

Our religion prescribes a law of culture. 

It is generally believed that the pivot of all modern history' 
is the hour when God revealed himself. 

We believe that history is a series of chapters in the autobi- 
ography of mankind, each fresh manifestation of mind being 
a fresh disclosure of the divine intention. 

It is the popular impression that science must be held sub- 
ordinate to revelation. 

It is the rational impression that science is revelation. 

According to the ruling notion, piety is escape from the 
world, and refuge in God. 

According to the new notion, piety is fidelity to the aims 
and uses of the world. 

Pious opinion declares future blessedness to be the end of 
the elect. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



56l 



Reason declares moral uprightness, character, to be the 
noblest attainment. 

It is a principle in what is ordinarily called religion that 
culture draws men away from the the spiritual life. 

It is a principle in free religion that culture, in its large sense, 
is a means to the spiritual life. 

The common prejudice is that religion must regard liberty 
with suspicion. 

It is our judgment that the fullest liberty is essential to 
rational faith. 

It is a vulgar axiom that the spirit of the age must submit 
to be dominated by religion, which is the same yesterday, to-day, 
and for ever. 

It is with us a primary truth that religion must, in the future 
as in the past, accommndate its forms to the spirit of the age. 

These you will observe are suggestions, not dogmas. Free 
religion has no creed. — O. B. Frothingham. {Address at meet- 
ing of Free Religious Association, Boston, 1870.) 

Fear of the Living God. 

" It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.— Hebrews, A", |i a 

I wonder how many people know that this text is in the 
Bible. I wonder how many know that it is in the New Testa- 
ment. I wonder how many of those who know of its existence 
understand what it means, or ever tried to understand it. If it 
were written thus : " It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands 
of the living Satan/ 7 or, " it is a fearful thing to fail out of the 
hands of the living God " — that would be intelligible. But the 
passage as it runs is loaded, every word, with incomprehensi- 
bleness to modern Christians. I will not try to carry you back 
to the state of feeling about God which prevailed two thou- 
sand years ago. Two thousand years is a long time; and 
when everything else that people thought and did looks so very 
strange to us, what they thought and did about religion should 
not surprise us. 
23 



362 



4 

CHAPTERS PROM THE 



I might explain the sentence I have quoted by two others 
in the same chapter, the one immediately preceding this — "We 
know him who hath said, Vengeance is mine, I will repay ; " 
the other .concluding the chapter — " For our God is a con- 
suming fire." But to explain these sentences so that they 
would seem true to a modern mind would be as hard as to 
explain the text. Let us give up all attempt, then, to get fully 
into the mind of those dark ages of Faith, and see what there 
may be in our modes of thought that throws light on these 
strange words. 

Is it not common now to think of God as standing for moral 
law, judgment, retribution ? Is he not the representative of 
the accusing and avenging conscience ? When is he instinctively 
thought of? In dark days, in gloomy times, in periods of fear, 
when calamity befals, or sorrow comes, or death approaches, 
or the sense of guilt oppresses the mind. How is he com- 
monly thought of then ? As the being who darkens the day, 
makes the time gloomy, produces the fear, sends the calamity, 
causes the sorrow, inflicts the death, holds over the sense of 
guilt the rod of penalty. He is the awful Being. At the men- 
tion of His name men droop their heads, lengthen their faces, 
subdue their voices, let the light out of their countenances, and 
recall their misdoings. The word "punishment" calls up the 
thought of God. The mention of hell suggest Him. His 
attributes are the great swelling attributes that appal. He is 
Omnipotent ; men are pigmies before Him ; they are grasshop- 
pers ; He can blow them away as dust ; they are as asleep. 
He is Omniscient. He knows what everybody is about, knows 
what they are thinking of, what they are feeling ; has a detective 
in every bosom. All over Christendom people tremble as they 
think of that Justice that holds every one to the letter of the 
Law, and makes each answerable for his deeds without regard 
to all those fine considerations which diminish the weight of 
personal responsibility. All over the world God is a terror. It 
is the effort of religious men to make him felt as a terror. Hear 
men pray to him. Read the Church litanies, Listen to the 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



363 



warning counsel given to wilful, vicious, and criminal people : 
"Be careful. You are watched. The Avenging Angel is 
dogging your footsteps. You are rushing to your doom." 
Christian men and women have not yet outgrown the feeling 
that the living God is an unsleeping policeman, incessantly 
walking his rounds. ***** 

Multitudes have trusted themselves to the Living God, and 
have found it sweet to do so. Broad thinkers, cutting them- 
selves adrift from the quiet moorings of their Faith, have 
launched away under the guidance of knowledge, and, instead 
of falling sheer into the gulf of unbelief and despair, have 
found themselves floating over sunny waters, beneath heavens 
lit with the glory of new constellations ; have discovered islands 
and continents never heard of before ; have made acquaintance 
with fresh territories of thought, and have learned how beau- 
tiful it was to be citizens of the world, free to come and go 
where they would, in full faith that the further they went the 
more wondering, reverential, and loving they would become, 
provided they went in sober earnestness and faith. 

Venturing to believe in humanity, we have tried republican 
institutions ; and in proportion to the fidelity of our experi- 
ment has been the demonstration of its success. Mr. Carlyle's 
frightful picture of "shooting Niagara" provokes a smile. In 
live humanity we find there is a live Deity; and so far from 
its being a "fearful thing" to fall into his hands, we are only 
praying that we may have grace to fall into his hands more 
entirely. If anything will save us from the fearfulness of the 
ancient systems of government, which assumed that the living 
God dwelt in a palace and left it only to prowl round the 
gardens and awe intruders, it is trust in the principle that people 
are best governed when they govern themselves. 

It was believed in the olden time that the State must main- 
tain religion ; that if it did not, the evil one who was constantly 
going about seeking whom he might devour would snap up 
many souls, as a vulture snaps up chickens, and would bring 
the whole land to the barrenness of infidelity. The State did 



364 



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cease to have any concern with religion, and never was 
so much piety, so much personal faith or conviction, so much 
deep individual concern for spiritual things. The wicked 
one who prowled about seeking whom he might devour, proved 
to be the living God stirring in his children's hearts the embers 
of the personal religious life. 

It was believed in the olden time that either the Church or 
the despotic State must undertake the support of the schools. It 
was a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the malicious demon 
of ignorance which infested the world. But on the voluntary sys- 
tem, which throws on the people the responsibility of educating 
themselves, the schools not only increased in numbers but 
improved in quality ; there is better teaching, better discipline, 
better school architecture and regulation. And so on in other 
things. We have found that the whole universe is filled with 
the Living God; that the Living God is not living jealousy, or 
wrath, or cunning, but living truth and goodness and benefi- 
cence. We have learned to see Him in the elements that bring 
us health, comfort, prosperity, happiness. We have learned 
to see Him in the elements which bring discipline, experience, 
wisdom. We have learned to see Him in air and light, in the 
fine gases, in muscle, nerve, fibre and tissue, in organs and 
functions. We have learned to see Him in intelligence and 
affection, in the glow of aspiration and in the courage of a 
noble will. We have learned to see Him in the wise economies 
that administer life, in the knowledge that centuries have built 
up, in the principles that brace us in our difficulties and solace 
us in our grief. We have come to the belief that the dreadful 
thing is to fall out of the hands of the Living God, to fall out 
of knowledge and reason and truth and charity, to fall out of 
confidence and trust, to remain so shut up in our narrow houses 
of belief or custom that we do not know what the Living God 
is, and are continually fancying that he is living ogre or living 
devil. * * * 

It is a fearful thing when one who has never questioned his 
belief first begins to question it, and stepping out of his old 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



365 



home of Faith, sees what looks like a howling wilderness about 
him. It is a fearful thing when one who has always dwelt on 
problems he could master, and has felt perfectly at home with 
the ordinary questions of his lot, finds himself face to face 
with problems he cannot master, and gropes about him in the 
dark for an answer to questions that baffle his intelligence. All 
experimenting of this kind is a fearful thing — all venture into 
the land of the unknown, though it has been going on for 
thousands of years, and has always resulted in the nobleness 
of mankind. Nothing is so fearful as Novelty in custom or 
institution. However confident their anticipation of heaven, 
none are ready to die. But experience teaches us that the 
fearfulness is for the instant. The momentary shock of the 
plunge over, a new set of powers comes into play ; a new order 
of satisfactions reveals itself to view ; a new and broader exist- 
ence is disclosed. We come to learn that to live under law, to 
live justly, healthfully, obediently, trustingly, is the farthest 
possible from being a fearful thing. The liar, the thief, the 
traitor, the murderer, would all be the happier for falling into 
the hands of the Living God. I plead for the substitution of a 
spirit of quiet repose for a spirit of fear, as we think of the 
power that holds our destiny in its hands. I plead for a spirit 
of courage in meeting emergencies, facing difficulties, coming 
in contact with trials, encountering what seems to be evils, 
entering upon new and untried paths of life. Let us be sure 
that there is no demon but the demon of doubt, fear, ignorance, 
in our own timid bosoms ; that out of doors all is light and 
power. — O. B. Frothingham. 



Religious Liberty. 

For myself, I belong to a sect (Baptist). I love it and I 
honor it. I believe its history to be one of transcendant glory. 
I believe that the brave men and women who have belonged 
to it in different ages and in different lands, have stood in the 
front rank of those who have demanded "soul liberty •/? and 



3 66 



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at the stake, at the whipping-post, in the prison, everywhere by 
their blood they have sealed this precious testimony. But I 
am sometimes afraid that my sect, having passed out from 
under the harrow of persecution, being no longer a scorned 
and outcast people, having grown to magnificent proportions 
of strength, of culture, of education, of wealth, and of power, 
are beginning to forget the glorious lessons of the past, and 
are tempted to build up simply an ecclesiastical structure, and 
to put their hand of power upon those who wish only to repeat 
the announcements which our ancestors so gloriously and so 
bravely made. All church history is but a repetition of this 
experience, and therefore it comes to pass that in every age 
this battle must be fought over again. Through eighteen long 
centuries, now in this land and now in that, now by this people 
now by that people, now by a resistance to civil tyranny, now 
by a protest against ecclesiastical despotism, this assertion of 
the liberty of every man to believe for himself, answering only 
to God, and not to human tribunals, has been made again and 
again. I believe that it is made here to-day not in any spirit 
of wild enthusiasm or distorted fanaticism, but in a calm, 
earnest, studious, and honest way. 

Now, in this land which we call free, in this age which we 
call glorious, we need not perhaps so much for our own sakes 
as for the sake of those who shall come after us, to assert the 
principle which more than two long centuries ago was the very 
axiom of Protestantism, — the absolute right of every human 
soul to interpret for itself the whole word of Scripture. No 
longer do the thunderbolts forged at the Vatican, and hurled 
by the angry hand of the Pope, excite alarm, but merriment 
only, on the part of those against whom they are directed. The 
horrid chambers of the Inquisition are deserted, the dreadful 
mechanism of torture lies idle and rusted, the whipping-post 
and the scaffold to-day claim no victims to religious bigotry ; 
but there is a more subtle, and if possible, a more accursed 
persecution, which, to-day even, is employed by too many who 
vainly dream they are doing God service. It is the persecu- 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



367 



tion which seeks to brand with odium and write " outcast" 
upon brave and honest souls, who simply differ from their 
fellows on questions of intellectual interpretation or doctrinal 
statement, w r hile their behavior and lives are on the side of 
justice, of brotherhood, and of love. I think, therefore, that 
we need to take to ourselves the lessons which are so beau- 
teously illustrated in the life and behavior of Jesus ; that it is 
not what a man says he believes that makes him either to be 
accepted or to be rejected, but it is what a man does. A life 
of justice, a life of purity, a life of chasteness, a life of tem- 
perance, a life of benevolence, a life that puts out its hand of 
defence over the weak and the oppressed, a life that dares to 
defy wealth and power, even, if they are upon the side of 
wrong, — is not such a life a life of unquestioned righteous- 
ness ? For myself I hold it to be a cardinal and vital dogma, 
that Jesus of Nazareth is the Saviour of the world. I believe 
him to be God incarnated, manifested in flesh. When I look 
upon him stretched upon the Cross of Calvary, when I behold 
that crown of thorns, those wounded hands and feet, that side 
pierced by the cruel foeman's spears, my soul sees there my 
vicarious atonement and sacrifice, and by the shedding of that 
blood I believe my sin to be pardoned. That, to my soul, is 
a profound, deep, earnest, and absorbing belief. But if any 
other man judge differently, I am not constituted an ecclesi- 
astical tribunal to try him, or to pronounce a verdict of 
condemnation against him. I think of what Jesus himself 
said, " Who art thou that judgest another man's servant ? To 
his own master he standeth or falleth." I recollect that the 
severest and bitterest rebukes which passed the lips of the 
gentle Nazarene were those which were hurled at the scribes 
and pharisees who sat at Moses' seat, who wore broad phylac- 
teries, who loved the uppermost seats in the synagogue, who 
paid tithes of mint, anise, and cummin, and yet who devoured 
widows' houses, and forgot the wider law of justice and love. 
I transfer that lesson to to-day, and think that it is not the out- 
ward ecclesiastical relationships which men hold that will save 



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them, or cause them to perish, but that vital communion 
between God and their own souls is the one thing necessary to 
salvation. 

This much we need, it seems to me,- — a more earnest, a 
more profound, a more devout and hearty work in our day and 
land, to save from the woes and suffering, that do encompass 
them about, the millions of the children of want. Let us not 
be so industrious for the erection of gorgeous church edifices, 
for the devising of elaborate ceremonials, for the defence of 
ordinances or of doctrines, however needful we may think 
them to be ; but let us be very zealous and careful in our work 
and errand of mercy to do that which is just and true and right 
and good. Whether, therefore, a man belong to one sect or 
another, whether he belong, as St. Francis Xavier, to the old 
Romish communion, or, as Emanuel Swedenborg, to the Church 
of the New Jerusalem, or, as the glorious Channing, to a broad 
and Catholic faith, or whether he belong to no outward eccle- 
siastic organization whatever, these questions, it seems to me, 
fade and sink away into insignificance in comparison with this 
vital and absorbing question. Are we conscious of the deep 
responsibility that rests upon us during the brief day of our 
earthly life, that we perform life's errand and mission well? 
When I myself rest this weary head under the green sod, and 
some child or beloved friend shall stand there some summer 
day, when nature weaves a garniture of blossoms above me, 
and the birds in the boughs of trees overhead are making the 
air musical, I take God this moment to witness, I would rather 
have it said of me, " There lies a man who was a friend to the 
widow and to the orphan, who spoke a word for the slave, for 
the outcast, and the suffering, and who, in all the works of 
sweet humanity and righteousness, followed after the footsteps 
of Jesus," than to have it said of me, " He was mighty in the 
defence of his fdth, and established the dogmas of his sect." 

Do you recollect what Garibaldi, the apostle of Italian 
liberty and unity, said, just before he made his memorable 
attack upon Rome ? He called his soldiers together, and said, 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



369 



" Let those who choose hunger and wounds and death follow 
me." To-day I seem to hear the Captain of our salvation, 
calling out to us and saying, "Let those who choose self-denial 
those who choose crucifixion to the world and to self-indul- 
gence, walk after my steps !" We are not to climb some giddy 
height of ecclesiastical preferment ; we are not to win for our- 
selves fortune ; but we are to do justly and to do well, in God's 
name, and with God's help, trusting that the day may speedily 
come when differences in the interpretation and apprehension 
of truth may be changed into unity of spirit, in that better and 
perfect creed of our Lord, where clouds and shadows come 
not, and where every soul is filled with immaculate purity and 
love. — Rev. C. If. Malcom, Newport, R. L 



Being and Doing. 

Doing is necessary, for what avails the spirit if it be not 
embodied in some outward form ? It expires, it evaporates. 
We must actualize it in life and noble deeds. But you esteem 
the tree for its fruit-bearing power, and not alone for its present 
crop. It has a higher value than its immediate yield. So 
character is greater than conduct, for it is the source of con- 
duct. * * * At the divine judgment the question will not 
be simply what have you done, but what are 3-ou? Perhaps in 
that sifting of being from doing, of character from conduct, the 
supposed sinner shall turn out a saint, and the reputed saint be 
sent to the lowest place. And herein lies much of the immor- 
ality of the popular doctrine which holds out the hope of 
heaven and the fear of hell as motives to lives of charity, tem- 
perance, honesty, and good-will; for deeds done thus, on 
speculation, as means to a selfish end, are as morally valueless 
as ecclesiastical penances and practices. The Protestant who 
salves over his conscientious scruples for sin by leaving a few 
dimes' worth of tracts at our front doors, is on the same level 
of moral life with the Catholic who measures his piety by the 
number of his pater nosters. 



37° 



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Summing up then : which is best ? to make your works 
better than yourself, or to make yourself so good that no 
work can adequately represent you ? For still it remains true 
that you can never put the highest into words or deeds. Speech 
is limited, words are insufficient to express the richest and 
fullest life of the soul. Speech is human, the soul is divine ; 
finite works can never justly represent the infinite source from 
whence they sprang, * * * 

What the age needs is this constant affirmation of the spirit 
against the materializing influences of our common daily life, 
and the present one-sided development of scientific thought. 
" The soul," said an old philosopher, " is the measure of all 
things." Spirit alone can adequately interpret to us the prob- 
lems of the world of matter and the universe of man. * * 
The fleshly eye sees the sparrow fall to the ground, the spirit 
reassures itself with the thought that the Father sees it fall. 
Unfeeling hands press the crown of thorns upon the sensitive 
brow, but the spirit discerns the roses crowning the thorns, and 
is at peace. 

It is the soul which gives birth to the distinctions, good or 
evil, right or wrong, for the soul is the measure of the universe. 
So in human life, our deeds are characterless in themselves ; and 
merely symptomatic of our inner being. What you are lends 
significance to what you do. Strive then, first of all, for that 
sublime faith, that vital piety, that stability of character, which 
is the infallible source of large-hearted deeds. * * * Deeds 
must spring spontaneously from the divine life within the soul. 
In this harmonious interaction lies the only possible guarantee 
for a healthy normal life. But let us recognize the soul as the 
true center of our moral being, and be able to say, with Lav- 
ater, " May my deeds be like my words, and my words be like 
my heart." 

Then our works will no longer be forced and unrepresent- 
ative, but genuine, spontaneous and efficient ! 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



371 



" Thou must be true thyself, 

If thou the truth wouldst teach \ 
Thy soul must overflow, if thou 

Another soul would reach ; 
It needs the overflowing heart 

To give the lips full speech. 
Think truly, and thy thought 

Shall the world's famine feed ; 
Speak truly, and thy word 

Shall be a fruitful seed ; 
Live truly, and thy life shall be 

A great and noble creed." 

Charles W. Wendte, Chicago, IlL 

R. W. Emerson — Teachings. 

— To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things 
are sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. 
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light 
which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster 
of the firmament of bards and sages. We lie in the lap of 
immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and 
organs of its activity. The relations of the soul to the Divine 
Spirit are so pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. 

— Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine wis- 
dom, old things pass away — means, teachers, texts, temples 
fall ; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present 
hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it. When a 
man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur 
of the brooks and the rustle of the corn. The soul raised over 
passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the 
self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself with know- 
ing that all things go well. 

— Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can 
bring you peace but the triumph of principles. 

— Proverbs, like the sacred books of each nation, are the 
sanctuary of the intuitions. 



372 



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— O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the center 
of Nature, and over the will of every man, so that none of us 
can wrong the universe. 

— The way to speak and write what shall not go out of 
fashion is, to speak and write sincerely. A man passes for what 
he is worth. Very idle is all curiosity concerning other people's 
estimate of us, and all fear of remaining unknown is not less 
so. Never was a sincere word utterly lost. Never a magna- 
nimity fell to the ground, but there is some heart to greet and 
accept it unexpectedly. 

— This over-estimate of the possibilities of Paul and Per- 
icles, this under-estimate of our own, comes from a neglect of 
the fact of an identical nature. 

— The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magna- 
nimity and trust. Every violation of truth is not only a sort of 
suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human soci- 
ety. Trust men and they will be true to you ; treat them 
greatly, and they will show themselves great, though they make 
an exception in your favor to all their rules of trade. I see 
not any road of perfect peace which a man can walk, but after 
the counsel of his own bosom. 

—As there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and 
the infinite heavens, so is there no bar or wall in the soul where 
man, the effect, ceases, and God, the cause, begins. We lie 
open on one side to the deeps of spiritual nature, to the attri- 
butes of God. 

— Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so. 
Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty. 
With each divine impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the 
visible and finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and 
expires its air. The heart which abandons itself to the 
Supreme Mind finds itself related to all its works, and will 
travel a royal road to particular knowledges and powers. 
Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the soul. 

■ — All goes to show that the soul in man is not an organ, 
but animates and exercises all the organs ; is not a function 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



373 



like the power of memory, of calculation, of compassion, but 
uses these as hands and feet ; is not a faculty, but a light ; is 
not the intellect or the will, but master of the intellect and the 
will ; is the background of our being in which they lie — an 
immensity not possessed, and that cannot be expressed. 

— Let man then learn the revelation of all nature and all 
thought to his heart ; this, namely : that the Highest dwells 
with him ; that the sources of nature are in his own mind, if 
the sentiment of duty is there. But if he would know what 
the great God speaketh, he must " go into his closet and shut 
the door," as Jesus said. God will not make himself manifest 
to cowards. He must greatly listen to himself, withdrawing 
himself from all the accents of other men's devotion. Even 
their prayers are hurtful to him, until he has made his own. 
Our religion vulgarly stands on numbers of believers. When- 
ever the appeal is made — no matter how indirectly — to numbers, 
proclamation is then and there made that religion is not. He 
that finds God a sweet enveloping thought to him never counts 
his company. When I sit in that presence, who shall dare to 
come in ? When I rest in perfect humility, when I burn with 
pure love, what can Calvin or Swedenborg say ? 

— But the idea which now begins to agitate society has a 
wider scope than our daily employments, our households, and 
the institutions of property. We are to revise the whole of our 
social structure, the State, the school, religion, marriage, trade, 
science, and explore their foundation in our own nature. What 
is man born for but to be a Reformer, a Re-maker of what 
man has made ; a renouncer of lies ; a restorer of truth and 
good, imitating that great Nature which embosoms us all, and 
which sleeps no moment on an old past, but every hour repairs 
herself, yielding us every morning a new day, and with every 
pulsation a new life ? Let him remove everything which is not 
true to him. ***** 

But there will dawn erelong on our politics, on our modes 
of living, a nobler morning in the sentiment of love. Our age 
and history for these thousand years has not been the history 



374 



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of kindness, but of selfishness. Our distrust is very expensive. 
The money spent for courts and prisons is ill laid out. We 
make, by distrust, the thief and burglar, and incendiary, 
and by our court and jail we keep him so. An acceptance of 
the sentiment of love throughout Christendom for a season, 
would bring the felon and the outcast to our side in tears, with 
the devotion of his faculties to our service. See this wide 
society of laboring men and women. We allow ourselves to 
be served by them, we live apart from them, and meet them on 
the street without a salute. We do not greet their talents, nor 
rejoice in their good fortune, nor foster their hopes, nor in the 
assembly of the people vote for what is dear to them. Thus 
we enact the part of the selfish noble and king from the world's 
foundation. See, this tree always bears one fruit. In every 
household, the peace of a pair is poisoned by the malice, shy- 
ness, insolence, and alienation of the domestics. * * * Let 
our affections flow out to our fellows ; it would operate in a 
day the greatest of all revolutions. The State must consider 
the poor man, and all voices must speak for him. Every child 
born must have a just chance (with work) for his bread. Let 
the amelioration in our laws of property proceed from the con- 
cession of the rich, not from the grasping of the poor. Let us 
begin by habitual imparting. Let me feel that I am to be a 
lover. I am to see to it that the world is the better for me, 
and to find my reward in the act. 

A. J. Davis, — Teachings. 

— Be contented with the Past, and with all it has brought 
you. 

Be thankful for the Present, and for all you have. 
Be patient and hopeful for the Future, and for all it promises 
to bring you. 

It may cause many conflicts and efforts, but resolve that from 
this moment y on will live harmoniously . Every day will strengthen 
your resolution. Live thus and every morning the spirit will 
feel new and pure as an infant. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



375 



— The science, the chemistry and mechanism of Divine Crea- 
tion are represented in the human form ; and the holy elements 
and attributes of God are incarnated in every human spirit. To 
be like heaven let us aspire to heaven; to be like God let us 
aspire to God. Harmony must begin with the individual; 
it will thence spread over families, societies and nations ; and 
then the whole will represent the individual, and the individual 
the whole; and God will be All in All. 

— Disease is a want of equilibrium in the circulation of the 
spiritual principle through the physical organization. In plainer 
language, disease is discord ; and this discord or derangement 
must exist primarily in the spiritual forces by which the organ- 
ization is actuated and governed. 

■ — Popular theology or education are insufficient to supply 
the spirit with its proper nourishment or encouragement to an 
easy and natural progression. Theology is inadequate to the 
reconstruction of society; and popular education, which is satu - 
rated with this theology, is inadequate to the proper direction 
and education of the spirit. It requires but little time to learn 
what is tiseful, what is just, and what is pure; — and Beauty, 
Aspiration and Harmony are familiarly explained in the fields 
of universal Nature and Humanity. To understand what har- 
mony is, the spirit must become harmonious. A harmonious 
individual is a revelation of the Divine Mind. 

■ — The philosophy of death is the philosophy of change ; 
not of change in the personality of the individual, but of change 
in the situation of the human Spiritual Principle; which, instead 
of being situated in an earthly body, is placed in a spiritual 
organization; and instead of living among the objects and per- 
sonalities of the planet on which the spirit was born, its situation 
is so altered as to fit it to live amidst more beauteous forms and 
in higher societies. * * Believe not that what is called 
death is a final termination of human existence, nor that the 
change is so thorough and entire as to alter or destroy the con- 
stitutional peculiarities of the individual; but believe righteously 
that death causes as much alteratio?i in the condition ot the 



37^ 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



individual as the bursting of a rose-bud causes in the situation 
and condition of the flower. Death is therefore only an event, 
a circumstance, in the eternal life and experience of the human 
soul. As the death of the germ is necessary to the birth and 
development of the flower, so is the death of man's physical 
body an indispensable precedent and indication of his spiritual 
birth or resurrection. * * Night and sleep correspond to 
physical death ; but the brilliant day and human wakefulness 
correspond to spiritual birth and individual elevation. 

— If the soul is faithful to Nature and her principles, there 
can and will be no limits to its health, happiness, and power 
to work the sublimest miracles. The faithful spirit is God-like 
in its every manifestation. Such a mind is capable of inter- 
preting the multifarious phenomena of Nature ; and through the 
instrumentality of eternal principles, its attributes can be 
unfolded even to the perception of gorgeous spheres, radiant 
with purity, beauty and peacefulness. If one is true to Nature 
(which is being true to himself and to the Divine Mind) he can 
improve the condition of his neighbor, and heal persons of 
many apparently incurable maladies. Let us all aspire to this ' 
glorious state of spiritual exaltation ! The remedial agents of 
Nature are : Dress, Food, Water, Air, Light, Electricity and 
Magnetism. 

— A child is the repository of infinite possibilities. Enfolded 
in the human infant is the beautiful "image" of the imperish- 
able and perfect human being. In the baby constitution we 
recognize the holy plans of Divine Goodness — the immortal 
impartations of Divine Wisdom — the image and likeness of the 
Supreme Spirit — the possibilities of the greatest manhood, 
womanhood and angelhood. The human mind is the most 
richly endowed. Its sphere of influence and action is the 
broadest. It is empowered to hold dominion over time, events, 
things, and circumstances. It draws its life unceasingly from 
the divine life of Nature. It feeds on the phenomena of truth. 
It aspires intuitively after perfection. It rises to the sphere of 
individuality and freedom. It includes all the laws and con- 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



377 



ditions of growth, variety, genius, renewal, progress, and 
completeness. 

— " Man is the measure of all things," said Protagoras, one 
of the Greek sophists ; " and as men differ there can be no 
absolute truth." " Man is the measure of all things," replied 
Socrates, the true philosopher; "but descend deeper into his 
personality, and you will find that underneath all varieties there 
is a ground of steady truth. Men differ, but men also agree ; 
they differ as to what is fleeting ; they agree as to what is 
eternal. Agreement is the region of truth ; let us endeavor to 
penetrate that region." 

— Harmonial spirit-culture is the noblest work of the sciences. 
The divine image is within. It is the end of true education 
to develop that image, and so truly too that the child's individ- 
uality and constitutional type of mind shall not be impaired, 
but revealed in its fulness and personal perfection. "Be ye 
perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect," is an injunc- 
tion of sublimest import. Every faculty and function of the 
individual is amenable to that heavenly principle. Everything 
has a glory of its own. The highest aim of education is to 
reveal the life and form of that individual perfection which 
Divine Wisdom has implanted in the human spirit, and different 
minds demand different methods. 

— What do you believe ? I believe that all mankind are 
the children of God and Nature ; that discord is the cause of 
all unhappiness ; that harmony is heaven ; that there is no 
death to the soul and spirit ; that sins are not forgiven, but 
outgrown through repentance and a righteous life. 

Who are nearest heaven ? 

They who have healthy bodies and harmonious minds. 
W T hat is the light of world ? 

Eternal Truth which cannot be destroyed, or hidden. 
What are the most beautiful forms of Truth ? 
Good works. 

Who shall be called great, in the Summer Land ? 



24 



378 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



He who loves truth in his deepest heart, and exemplifies it 
in his relations to the world. 

To whom shall the temple of Harmony be opened ? 
To those who lovingly knock at the door of Wisdom. 
What is sin ? 

Sin is a name for excess — the blunder of man in his devel- 
opment, a ditch into which, when blinded by ignorance or 
passion, we stumble for a season. 

What are man's highest attractions ? 

His best and highest attractions take their rise in the supe- 
rior parts of the brain — the wisdom-region — from the organs of 
benevolence, veneration, conscientiousness, firmness, hope, and 
ideality and marvelousness. 

What is forbidden by the law of beauty ? 

All physical habits which impair the most agreeable propor- 
tions of form or feature ; and especially, mental dispositions 
that deface the richer beauty with which the Father hath 
adorned the inner life. 

What is true religion ? 

True religion is universal Justice — which begins at the 
center of the individual and widens outwardly, wave-like as the 
ocean swells — predicating thus the happiness of all upon the 
harmony of each. 

What are the sacraments of this religion ? 

First, personal cleanliness and chastity ; second, a heart 
full of warm devotional love to man and Deity ; third, a head 
full of serene, strong, steady wisdom ; fourth, reverence for 
the marriage relation ; fifth, the regeneration of the world as 
far as possible through little children ; sixth, and every human- 
itary institution. 

What are the sacraments of the New Dispensation? 

First, the immortality of the spirits of all men; second, 
the immediate resurrection of the soul (retaining the shape of 
the body) at death into a purer progressive world ; third, the 
enjoyment of intercourse with the departed through several 
mediations. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



379 



What is prayer ? 

The spontaneous act of filial love ; the soul's involuntary 
yearning for perpetual aid; an intuitive acknowledgment to 
the Supernal for the fact of existence ; a desire for additional 
benefits and continued happiness. 

What is the legitimate effect or prayer ? 

The effect of too much reliance on the invisible for aid is 
to beget weak-mindedness and unfitness for any great work ; 
no man can accomplish much who doubts his personal capa- 
bilities and shrinks individual responsibility. 

But the normal effect of prayer is two-fold — first, to open 
and prepare the soul for spiritual influx and illumination, — 
second, to attract a portion of the angel-world into harmony 
with our interior necessities. 

True spirit-prayer, like the glory of the morning dew, 
ascends noiselessly. The answer, that comes, welcome as the 
fall of rain, when the soul most needs nutrition. 

What is fidelity? 

The integrity of your soul to itself, obedience to the angel 
of God within. 

What is infidelity ? 

The wilful violation of that within you, which you believe 
to be Truth, Justice, and Righteousness. 
Who is the most successful man ? 

He who seeth the secret victory that ever dwelleth within 
any defeat of an honest effort. 
Who is the mightiest man?_ 

He who can, at all times and amid all circumstances, con- 
trol the impulses of Love by the voice of Wisdom. 
Who is the greatest philanthropist ? 
He who does good to some and harm to none. 
Who is the most holy man ? 

He who never acts contrary to his highest perceptions of 
right. 

Who is the best husband ? 



38o 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



He who, when you examine him by your highest attractions, 
hath the purest spirit and the cleanest body. 
Who is the best wife ? 

She who, when you examine her by the intuitions of your 
highest temperament, is the sweetest girl, the truest friend, the 
gentlest sister, the most attractive woman. 

What is man ? 

A product of all the universe. Physiologically — of all orders 
and properties of matter ; psychologically — of all essences and 
properties of mind. 

What shall be done with a system of sectarian religion 
which promulgates despotic doctrines or dogmas ? 

The declarations of Science must be denounced ; Reason 
must be silenced ; Experience, on its bended knees, must con- 
fess to lies ; Truth must conform ; Virtue be vilified ; Justice 
denied ; and man's whole nature must bow in obedience to the 
dictates of arbitrary authority. The authority of opinion must 
be imposed on the plastic mind of youth ; pressed, regardless 
of all healthy resistance, into its very substance ! He grows 
to manhood shackled in bondage. He cannot think. He wor- 
ships, not the Truth, but the Authority ; he is therefore a bigot 
and a slave. 

Should a man guard his individualism against the authority 
of Institutions? 

Certainly : Does it profit to sell the soul for popu- 
larity? What is there in the world more valuable than 
manhood or womanhood? The world answers, " Nothing !" 
And yet behold the universal distrusting and crucifying of the 
individual ! Before the gods man bows, yielding adoration to 
mythological idols — to his own dishonor and degradation. 

— Association, progression, development, are everywhere 
the processes by which matter is moulded into all forms, from 
the granite rock to the wondrous body of man. 

— Everything is designed to subserve the vast and bound- 
less laboratory of the All-wise and great Positive Mind ; and 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 38 1 

immutable laws operate upon a divine and universal system of 
cause, effect, and end. 

God said, " Let us make man : " 

And then use, the first attribute of wisdom, said : Man 
shall be a culmination of universal Nature ; so organized in 
his body as to receive and elaborate the animating elements of 
nature into an eternal soul ; and his soul, being constituted of 
those principles which are pure, everlasting, and infinite, shall 
possess and obey the tendency to unfold and progress forever. 

And Justice, the second attribute of wisdom, said : Man 
shall occupy such position in the universe as will secure to all 
things, organized or unorganized, visible or invisible, a perma- 
nent equilibrium of power, possessions and demands. 

And Power, the third attribute of wisdom, said : Man shall 
be created through the mediums and instrumentalities of count- 
less suns and planets, and through the regular development of 
minerals, animals and vegetables • each of which shall cor- 
respond to, represent, and embody some particular portion of 
his organism. 

And Beauty, the fourth attribute of wisdom, said : Man 
shall represent and embrace all suns and planets, all minerals 
and vegetables ; and the energy, strength, symmetry, and struc- 
tural beauty of all animals, in his form, organs, and functions. 

And Aspiration, the fifth attribute of wisdom, said : Man 
shall know himself to be immortal, he shall be the king, the 
crown, the coronation of Nature ; he shall aspire to be an 
Angel, a Seraph, a God. 

And Harmony, sixth and highest attribute of wisdom, said : 
Man shall be an embodiment of the Great Spirit who creates 
him ; he shall represent, in a finite degree, the elements and 
attributes of the Infinite ; he shall desire, and be capable of, 
and shall enjoy the most ineffable blessedness ; he shall aspire 
after harmony, shall unfold it, and shall give-his eternal exist- 
ence to its maintenance ; he shall be an embodiment of Nature, 
a revelation of Harmony, and an image of God. 



382 



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Such is deeply impressed on my spirit as the far shadow of 
the Divine plans. 

■ — The intention of Nature, everywhere manifest, is the per- 
fection of Man. 

■ — All the processes of nature combined to produce Man as 
an ultimate ; all were essential for this intent and result. 

■ — The central idea and inspiration of the Harmonial Phi- 
losophy is Perfect love of all Wisdom. Wisdom is the 
highest comprehension and embodiment of all scientific, philo- 
sophical, spiritual and celestial principles or ideas, which are 
eternal and universal; knowledge pertains to facts, things, 
events and external experiences. 

— Ideas being universal, the Fraternity of Ideas runs like a 
golden thread, through all religions, and therein they agree. 
Thoughts and prejudices being personal, local, and limited, 
make the clash of conflicting creeds, and feed the passions of 
bigots. 

Teachings and Inspirations from Many Sources. 

The law of marriage is universal. — Brahm. 

The end of human life is righteousness. — Buddha. 

The character of God is a unit. — Moses. 

All evil will be overcome by good. — Zoroaster. 

Charity is fraternal justice. — Confucius. 

The origin of harmony is Divinity. — Pythagoras. 

Goodness is the only happiness. — Socrates. 

All things have a spiritual origin. — Plato. 

Health is temperance in all things. — Epicurus. 

Internal purity is the cause of Charity. — Jesus. 

All truth is consistent and harmonious. — Origen. 

Every man's faith is a sovereign power. — Luther. 

God is Almighty and will prevail. — Calvin. 

God is present in every human spirit. — Fox. 

The law of correspondence is universal. — Swedenborg. 

All men are missionaries. — Wesley. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



383 



God is both Father and Mother. — Ann Lee. 
The love of God is impartial. — John Murray. 
Man is capable of eternal improvement. — Channing. 
Human nature is relatively perfect. — Parker. 
Self-reliance is obedience to God. — Emerson. 
The right to liberty is inherent and universal. — Garrison. 
Every person is naturally immortal. — Spiritualism. 
The love of all wisdom is man's integral aspiration. — Har- 
monial Philosophy. — A. J. Dams. 

Love and Good Works the Life of Heaven. 

But the crowning excellence of this celestial sphere, and 
which distinguishes the souls of the just from the dark spirits 
below — and marks the difference between our visions of the 
heavens and all revelations hitherto — is the high, paramount 
prominence which is awarded to the great love-element of 
universal charity. Here we find no loud eternity of idle harp- 
ing and perpetual song; no cruel transports of unpitying delight 
over the ever-ascending smoke of a brother's torment; no 
dreamless slumber of an everlasting repose ; no drowsy revel- 
ings in the lotus-dreams of an eternal voluptuousness; no 
heaven of beatific sensualism, where, bright and beautiful, ten 
thousand houris minister to the royal pleasure of a single hero- 
hero no longer in his luxurious abode ; no airy Valhalla, where 
the ghosts of warriors drink the foaming mead, and clash their 
resounding arms in day-long wassailing and the fabled tales of 
heroes ; though all these images are humanely acceptable, as 
types of the ever-acknowledged fact that souls in heaven are 
intrinsically and essentially what they are on earth, only per- 
fecting there the ideal of all excellence here. 

Moreover, our new heaven infringes not on the domain of 
any other heaven. Ours is that vast unclaimed — the heart's 
unexplored realm of generous work — of work that blesses 
others and delights the doer. The inhabitants of that beauti- 
ful domain are souls that keep their warm love and the blessed 



334 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



sympathies which made them so beautiful on earth — higher, 
and deeper, and broader there, making them still more beau- 
tiful. No heart could retain its best and loveliest element in 
a home of delight from which it knew a fellow-heart was 
excluded ; and to be ignorant of a brother's fate were a loss, 
and to souls of a higher order, an impossibility. I pray that 
I may not forget erring and wandering souls in the brightest hour 
that ever dawns upon my spirit. 

The revelations of these last years show us how to reconcile 
the beatified soul's completeness with the fact of souls in gloom 
and misery. In bringing the wanderer back to light, in breath- 
ing hope and cheer into hearts yet repining in their clay, in 
pouring promise down the dark abysses of despair and pain — 
in this work the souls of the redeemed find their best delight, 
and deeds of mercy make the heaven they people with all reno- 
vated lives. 

Have you not seen how a most beautiful face grows more 
intensely beautiful with deep thought? How even conquered 
suffering, and the soul's hard-earned victory over loss, desola- 
tion, and woe, can make the calm eye like a spirit's, and the 
pale cheek radiant with more than earthly physical beauty? 
With a far more prevailing power, the soul in light shapes the 
obedient features of its vesture, the spirit-body which encum- 
bers it not. Every sweet thought is a line of beauty to the 
form. Every noble impulse shapes the dilated figure to a grander 
expression of its strength, beauty, and grace. 

This beautiful life speaks no fear, no crouching vas- 
salage of soul, but a deep, natural, filial love, that so involves 
and permeates all the being, that existence with them can be 
nothing less than " worship" — an expression meaning naught 
else but high aspiration and unceasing praise to the all-loving 
Father. They do his work on earth, and in the nether spheres ; 
and this is joy, this is life ; this is the immortal heaven of souls 
who have gone up from suffering to delight. And in the joy 
of their great ransom, knowing how grateful is unexpected 
kindness, how inexpressibly dear is guardian love, they can 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



385 



never forget from whence they came, nor the pained struggling 
souls that lift their eyes to the blank heaven with such hushed 
agony of mute beseeching, where, thanks to the new light, they 
find the heavens no longer brass over their heads. They come ! 
the beautiful ones, the shining angels, in their love and light ! 

Oh ! beautiful upon the mountains are their feet, as they 
come laden with glad tidings. The mourner, though he sees 
not their transparent glory, hears not the mellow music of their 
love-breathing voices, nor even feels the quiet presence hallow- 
ing the spot, and the tender touch that smooths the throbbing 
head, yet feels that the hot tear has been swept away — the 
heart's strained pulses softened to a gentler flow — and blessed 
glimpses of a clearer faith come in upon the night of his grief. 
O look to these realms of light and love, when care, and pain, 
and doubt, make life a weariness. Let not dark unbelief put 
away the promise of "the light" which comes only to bless. — 
Charlotte B. Wilbour. 



Birth to the Higher Life — as seen Clairvoyantly. 

Death is but a door which opens into a new and more per- 
fect existence, and there is really nothing more painful or 
repulsive in the natural process of dying (that not induced by 
disease or accident) than in passing into a quiet, dreamless slum- 
ber. The truthfulness of this is illustrated and confirmed by 
the observation and investigation into the physiological and 
psychological phenomena of death, which my spirit was quali- 
fied to make at the moment of the physical dissolution of a 
personal friend. 

She was a woman about sixty years of age, who had con- 
sulted me as a physician eight months before her death. When 
the hour arrived, being an inmate of her house, I was fortu- 
nately in a proper state of mind and body to induce the 
Superior Condition, and previously sought a position where I 
might make my observations unnoticed and undisturbed. They 
were these : 



386 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



I saw that the physical organization could no longer sub- 
serve the many purposes and requirements of the Spiritual 
Principle. But the various internal organs of the body appeared 
to resist the withdrawal of the animating soul. The muscular 
system struggled to retain the element of Motion ; the vascular 
system strove to retain the element of Life ; the nervous system 
put forth all its power to retain the element of Sensation ; and 
the cerebral system labored to retain the principle of Intelli- 
gence. The body and soul, like two friends, resisted the 
circumstances which made their eternal separation imperative. 
These internal conflicts gave rise to manifestations of what 
seemed, to the material senses, to be most painful and thrilling 
sensations ; but I was unspeakably thankful when I perceived 
and realized the fact that those physical manifestations were 
indications, not of pain or unhappiness, but simply that the 
Spirit was dissolving its partnership with the material organism. 

Now the head of the dying person became suddenly 
enveloped in a fine, soft, mellow, luminous atmosphere; and as 
instantly, I saw the cerebrum and cerebellum expand their 
most interior portions ; I saw them discontinue their appropri- 
ate galvanic functions ; and then I saw that they became highly 
charged with the vital electricity and vital magnetism which 
permeate subordinate structures and systems. That is to say, 
the brain, as a whole, suddenly declared itself to be tenfold 
more positive over the lesser portions of the body than it ever 
was in health. This invariably precedes physical dissolution. 

Now the process of dying, or the spirit's departure from the 
body, was fully commenced. The brain began to attract the 
elements of electricity, magnetism, motion, life, and sensation, 
into its various and numerous departments. The head became 
intensely brilliant ; and I remarked that just in proportion as 
the extremities of the body grew dark and cold, the brain 
appeared light and glowing. 

Now I saw, in the mellow spiritual atmosphere, which 
emanated from and encircled her head, the indistinct outlines 
of the formation of another head ! The reader should remem- 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



387 



her that these super-sensuous processes are not visible to any one, 
except the spiritual perceptions be unfolded; for material eyes can 
only behold material things, and spiritual eyes can only behold 
spiritual things. This is a law of Nature. This new head 
unfolded more and more distinctly ; and so indescribably com- 
pact and intensely brilliant did it become, that I could neither 
see through it, nor gaze upon it as steadily as I desired. While 
this spiritual head was being eliminated and organized from out 
of and above the material head, I saw that the surrounding 
aromal atmosphere, which had emanated from the material 
head, was in great commotion ; but, as the new head became 
more distinct and perfect, this brilliant atmosphere gradually 
disappeared. This taught me that those aromal elements, 
which were, in the beginning of the metamorphosis, attracted 
from the system into the brain, and thence eliminated in the 
form of an atmosphere, were indissolubly united, in accordance 
with the divine principle of affinity in the universe, which per- 
vades and destinates every particle of matter, and that they 
developed the spiritual head which I beheld. 

With inexpressible wonder, and a heavenly reverence, I 
gazed on these holy processes. In the same manner in which 
the spiritual head was eliminated and unchangeably organized, 
I saw unfolding in their natural progressive order, the harmo- 
nious development of the neck, the shoulders, and the entire 
spiritual organization. It appeared from this that the innumer- 
able particles of what might be called unparticled matter, 
which constitute a man's spiritual principle, are constitutionally 
endowed with certain elective affinities, analogous to an immor- 
tal friendship. The innate tendencies which the elements and 
essences of her soul manifested, by uniting and organizing 
themselves, were the efficient and imminent causes which 
unfolded and perfected her spiritual organization. The defects 
and deformities of the physical body were almost removed in 
this spiritual body. In other words, it seemed that those hered- 
itary obstructions and influences, which had arrested the full 
and proper development of her physical constitution, were now 



3 88 



CHAPTERS FROM THE 



removed ; and therefore, that her spiritual constitution, being 
elevated above those obstructions, was enabled to unfold and 
perfect itself, in accordance with the universal tendencies of all 
created things. 

While this spiritual formation was going on, perfectly visible 
to my spiritual perceptions, the material body manifested, to 
the outer vision of her friends around her bed, many symp- 
toms of uneasiness and pain ; but they were wholly caused by 
the departure of vital or spiritual forces from the extremities 
and the viscera into the brain, and thence into the ascending 
organism. 

The spirit rose at right angles over the head of the deserted 
body. But immediately previous to the final dissolution of the 
relationship which had so long existed between the two, I saw, 
playing between the feet of the elevated spiritual body and the 
head of the prostrate physical form, a bright stream or current 
of vital electricity. This taught me that what is termed Death 
is but a Birth of the spirit from a lower to a higher state; that 
an inferior body and mode of existence are exchanged for a 
superior body and corresponding endowments and capabilities 
of happiness. I learned that the correspondence between the 
birth of a child into this world, and the birth of a spirit into 
the higher world, is absolute and complete, even to the umbilical 
cord, represented by the thread of vital electricity, which, for a 
few minutes, subsisted between and connected the two organ- 
isms. And here I saw that a small portion of this vital 
electrical element returned to the deserted body, just before 
the separation of this thread, and instantly diffused itself 
through the entire structure, to prevent an immediate decom- 
position. 

As soon as the spirit, whose departing hour I thus watched, 
was disengaged from the tenacious physical body, I directed 
my attention to the movements and emotions of the former; 
and I saw her begin to breathe the most interior or spiritual 
portions of the surrounding terrestrial atmosphere , which at 
first was done with difficulty, but soon with ease and delight. 



BIBLE OF THE AGES. 



389 



And I now saw that she was beautified, yet in every par- 
ticular with those proportions which characterized her earthly 
organism ; so that had her friends beheld her (as I did) they 
would have exclaimed, "How well you look !" 

I did not particularly notice the emotions of her fast 
unfolding spirit, except to remark her philosophic tranquility, 
and her non-participation with the members of her family 
present, in their bewailing of her departure, to unfold in Love 
and Wisdom. She understood at a glance that they could 
only look upon the cold and lifeless form which she had just 
deserted ; and she comprehended the fact that it was owing 
to want of true knowledge, that they thus vehemently regretted 
her physical death. 

The period of this change was about two hours or more, 
but this varies in different cases. Becoming accustomed to 
her new situation, she descended from her position over the 
body, and, by an effort of her will-power, passed out of 
the open door of the bedroom. It being summer the open 
doors offered no obstruction, and I saw her pass out from the 
house into the atmosphere ! To my delight and surprise I saw 
her walk in the atmosphere, as we tread the earth, which all 
spiritual organizations can do. 

Immediately she was joined by two friendly spirits from the 
spiritual country; and after tender recognition, the three grace- 
fully ascended obliquely through the air. I gazed upon them 
until distance shut them from my view, and returned to my 
external and ordinary condition. — A, J. Davis. 



APPENDIX. 



391 



APPENDIX. 



APPENDIX A. 

The word Veda means knowing or knowledge in the orig- 
inal Sanscrit, the sacred language of the Hindoos. Max Muller, 
with others, considers the Rig-Veda as the oldest, and indeed 
the original from whence the others were chiefly derived. The 
Yagur-Veda, the Sama-Veda, and the Atharva-Veda, are mostly 
liturgies or hymns for sacrificial occasions. Rig, or Rich, is 
from a Sanscrit root meaning to celebrate, and the ten books 
of the Rig-Veda contain about a thousand hymns, and for at 
least 2,500 years their verses and words have been carefully 
counted and memorized in the schools of the Brahmins, and 
countless commentaries have been written upon them. 

The first Ashtaka, or book, of the Rig- Veda has been 
translated by H. H. Wilson, F. R. S., &c, an eminent English 
scholar and resident in India, and his work is published in 
London, under the patronage of the Directors of the East India 
Company. Max Muller, Professor in Oxford University, and 
eminent in character and learning, has published a part of his 
translation. Rev. J. Stevenson, D. D., of London, has pub- 
lished, under the auspices of the Oriental Translation Eund, 
his translation of a part of the Sama-Veda, made after a resi- 
dence in India. From these sources, and from the Progress of 
Religious Ideas by Mrs. L. M. Child, I have made my extracts. 
The hymn to Agni, page 9, and the two following, are from 
Wilson ; for the rest from the Rig Veda, I have used Muller, 
except as parts thereof may be with other Vedas, from Mrs. 
Child's valuable work. Harug, Rosen, Burnouf, and others, 



39 2 



APPENDIX. 



have rendered valuable aid by research and translation, and the 
work of Muller now in progress will give us the fullest trans- 
lation of these ancient books. 

Dr. Harug, an eminent authority, dates the Vedic period in 
which these books were composed and collected, at from 
1,200 to 2,400 b. c, and the oldest hymns of the Rig Veda at 
2,400 b. c. Muller says we cannot well assign a later date 
than from 1,200 to 1500 b. c, supposes that writing was 
unknown at the date of the oldest hymns, and calls the Rig 
Veda "most venerable of Books." 

Brahmins trace back the Vedas 4,000 years, and Sir 
William Jones dates them about 1,580 b. c, or more than a 
century before Moses. 

The Code or Institutes of* Menu, or Manu, dates probably 
from 900 to 1,200 B. c. 

Of course, there can be no exactness in such remote dates, 
but the opinion of the best authorities leaves little doubt that 
the Rig Veda is the oldest of all Sacred Books. It is the 
Bible of Brahminism, and Muller says that India " is saturated 
with the idea of revelation ; " although there is a wide depart- 
ure from the simple purity of these old Vedic teachings. 

The Vedas know no idols, and teach a consciousness of 
sin which the divine powers can remove, if repentance be real, 
and prayer and sacrifice be observed. Personal immortality 
is taught in some of the hymns. The transmigration of souls 
would seem a later idea of Brahminism. The great sacrifice of 
the juice of the Soma, or moon-plant, is the occasion for many 
of the Vedic hymns. The idea of One God is taught. Rig 
Veda, hymn 164, says : "They call Him Indra, Mithra, Varuna, 
Agni ; that which is One the wise call it in divers names." 

Sometimes each of these is called the God. The thought 
of a Great Soul and Cause seems present, yet mingled with a 
personification of Nature's attributes and powers; Indra is 
sunlight; Agni fire, and messenger; Varuna is day; Ushas 
dawn ; Murats Storms, &c. Rakshakas are evil spirits, Rishis 
saints, and sometimes spirits of the departed. Of later date are 



APPENDIX. 



393 



Shasters, Puranas, Brahmanas, and many other works, in which 
are gradually brought out the strange mythology mingled with 
the great truths of Brahminism ; such for instance as the follow- 
ing from the Ramayana : " The sacrifice of a thousand horses 
has been put in the balance with the true word, and that one 
true word weighed down the balance. No virtue surpasses 
veracity. It is by truth alone that men attain to the highest 
realms of bliss. There are two roads that conduct to perfect 
virtue ; to be true, and to do no evil to any creature." 

Father Bouchet, a Catholic missionary in Hindostan, found 
the Trinity and the incarnation of the second person thereof 
taught there. Brahm, the Infinite, was manifest through Brahma 
and Vishnu, the preserving powers, and Siva the destroyer, in 
Brahminicai teachings, and Whittier has well interpreted their 
idea : 

" For wisely taught the Hindoo seer, 

Destroying Siva, forming Brahm, 
Who woke by turns earth's love and fear, 

Were one, the same." 

Incarnations of Vishnu were a part of their belief. 

The Bhagvat Geeta, or Dialogues between Kreeshna, or 
Chrishna, an incarnation of Deity, and his disciple Arjoun, is 
dated by Sir William Jones at 3,000 b. c. 

This is probably too ancient a date, but the fact that only 
the three oldest books of the Vedas are mentioned in it would 
indicate a high antiquity. 

I have used the translation of Charles Wilkins, a. d. 1785. 
He was an Englishman in the employ of the East India Com- 
pany, and a letter of endorsement of his ability and charac- 
ter, and of the excellence of his work, .from the well-known 
Governor of India, Warren Hastings, is in the preface of 
the volume before me. 

J. C. Gangooly, an educated Hindoo, a convert to Unita- 
rianism, who visited this country some years ago, giving the 
Hindoo belief as to signs and wonders that attended the birth 
2 5 



394 



APPENDIX. 



of Chrishna, said that he was born in prison, and that : " In 
the presence of the heavenly babe the fetters that bound the 
prison broke ; the cell began to dazzle, and joy overwhelmed 
the parents. A heavenly voice whispered to the father to fly 
with the child beyond the Jumna, which was done. The tyrant 
who sought to destroy the child sent messengers to kill the 
children in neighboring places." The similarity between this 
and other like traditions, and the New Testament narrative of 
Christ's lowly birth, and Herod's slaughter of the innocents, is 
noteworthy. 

The remarkable extracts from the Bhagvat Geeta need no 
comment or illustration. 



APPENDIX B. 

Buddha is a title, meaning " The Enlightened." Buddhists 
teach that there have been several Buddhas, and may be more ; 
men who become such by pure and true lives and high effort 
and endowment. Buddha, the great reformer, from whose 
influence Buddhism grew, was the son of a Prince, and was 
born at Kapilwarta, capital of his father's kingdom, at the foot 
of the Nepaul mountains, near the end of the Seventh Cen- 
tury before Christ. 

A Siamese Life of Buddha says : " The Great, the Holy 
Lord, the Being who was about to become Buddha, passed 
the first twenty-nine years of his life as a layman by the name 
of Prince Sidharta (one who has attained his aim). He then 
became a religious mendicant, and for six years subjected him- 
self to self-denials of a nature that other men could not endure. 
Thereafter he became the Lord Buddha, and gave to men and 
angels the draught of Immortality, which is the savor of the 
True Law. Forty-five years after this he entered the Holy 
Nirwana." He was also called Gautama, from the clan or tribe 
to which the family belonged. M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire 
gives 543 b. c. as the date of his death, and he lived about 



APPENDIX. 395 

eighty years. Renouncing his princely station and wealth, he 
went out as a preacher of The Word for more than forty years, 
and by his singular beauty and purity of life, and his spiritual 
insight and large abilities, wrought a vast change amidst 
the great power of Brahminism. Buddhism to-day counts 
some 300,000,000 disciples (or more than Christianity), spread 
over Hindostan, Ceylon, Thibet, Burmah and China, and it is 
a proof of the power of this form of religion that it abolished 
caste wherever it spread in Brahminical countries. 

With the Brahmins the Infinite was everything, and man, 
and this life, nothing in comparison. Buddhism reacted against 
this, and elevates righteousness in this life, and makes much of 
man and Nature. 

Buddha reached to Atheism in his purely metaphysical 
statements, and sometimes towards nihilism or extinction of 
soul and being; yet in some of his writings, immortality, reward 
and punishment therein, and of course, eternal law, were 
clearly taught. 

Nirwana, or Nirvana, of which frequent mention is made 
in Buddhist works, strictly translated, means annihilation, yet 
he did not teach that, and as Max Muller says : "If we con- 
sider that Buddha himself, after he had already seen Nirwana, 
still remains on earth and is a prey to death, that in the 
legends Buddha appears to his disciples after his death, it 
seems to me that all these circumstances are hardly reconcilable 
with the orthodox metaphysical doctrine of Nirwana." 

Nirwana would seem an elevated state, only possible to the 
pure and true, above all perturbation of passion or fear or 
anxiety. 

The extracts from the " Dammaphada, " said to be the 
teachings of Buddha himself, and certainly full of spiritual 
insight and power, must speak for themselves. This work was 
recognized by the great Council of Asoka, 243 b. c, as being 
by Buddha. We have made use of three works for information 
and quotation : "A Catena of Buddhist Scriptures, from the 
Chinese," by S. Beal; "The Wheel of the Law," by Henry 



39 6 



APPENDIX. 



Alabaster; " Buddhagosha's Parables," by Capt. T. Rogers, 
with a translation of the Dammaphada therein by Max Muller. 
The original language from which these ancient Buddhist 
writings are translated is called the Pali. 

All these works are by English gentlemen, officers of the 
Government, and residents in Asia, and are published by Trub- 
ner & Co., London, England. 

"The Modern Buddhist," I find in "The Wheel of the 
Law," and also a Life of Buddha translated from the Siamese. 
To give some idea of the narrations of wonderful events con- 
nected with his appearance on earth, I extract the incidents of 
his birth. The story of the marriage of his mother, Queen 
Maia, to the Prince Suddhodana, is told in glowing and beau- 
tiful Oriental language. The Queen, in a dream, was told of 
the immaculate conception of her child, and informed her hus- 
band, when, the Life continues : 

" The king rejoiced exceedingly, and gave orders that all 
care might be taken of his queen ; that wherever she might be, 
sleeping or waking, she might be surrounded by that which 
was pure, melodious, harmonious, refined, elegant, and simple. 

"And the forty thousand guardian angels of the ten thousand 
worlds watched around her with perfect delicacy. Never were 
they seen when she desired privacy, but at all other times she 
saw them guarding her day and night, and she saw them with- 
out fear. 

"From this time no sensual desire ever disturbed her 
thoughts. She steadfastly obeyed, as she had done from her 
youth up, the Five Great Commandments, and abstained from 
all impurity, as the mothers of Buddhas ever have done. * * 
Going to visit her parents, the king had the road cleared and 
levelled, and made gay with flags and flowers, and jars of water 
were placed along it. A golden litter was provided for the 
queen, and an escort of a thousand noble ladies attended her. 

"Between the cities of Kapila and Dewadaha, there was a 
forest of most beautiful trees, named Simwaliwana. Interlacing 
branches sheltered the traveler, as if with a canopy. The sun's 



APPENDIX. 



397 



scorching rays could not penetrate the delicious shade. From 
the trunks to the very tops of the trees flowers budded, bloomed, 
and shed their fragrant leaves, ever again budding and bloom- 
ing. Attracted by their sweet pollen, flights of shining beetles 
buzzed around them, filling the air with melodious humming 
like the music of the heavens. Lotuses of all colors grew in 
the pools, their sweet scent wafted by gentle breezes. When 
the Queen Maia entered this forest the trees bowed before her, 
as if they would say, ' Enjoy yourself, O, Queen among us, 
ere you proceed on your journey !' And the queen, looking 
on the forest lovely as the garden of the angels, ordered her 
litter to be stayed, that she might descend and walk. 

"Then, standing under one of the majestic trees, she desired 
to pluck a twig from the branches, and they bent themselves 
down that she might reach what she desired; and at that 
moment her labor came upon her. Her attendants held cur- 
tains around her ; the angels brought garments of the most 
exquisite softness ; and standing there, holding the branch, she 
brought forth her son, without pain or any of the circumstances 
which usually attend that event/' 

This gives a glimpse of the wonderful stories told of 
Buddha, which he never sanctioned or authorized, but which 
have clustered around his memory. 

In the Notes to this Life is the Pali narration of his death, 
at the close of forty-five years of meditation, penance, travel 
and preaching. 

"Hastening, as much as his malady permitted, to the city 
of Kusinagaru, attended by Anunda and his disciples, he gave 
some further instruction on various points, including the cere- 
monials of cremation. Reclining between two lofty sala trees, 
in the garden of the Malla Princes, close to Kusinagaru, he 
spoke his last words: 'Transitory things are perishable; 
qualify yourselves (for the imperishable)!' Absorbed in 
ecstatic meditation (Dhyana) he remained until the third 
watch of the night and then expired. 

"Then was there a great earthquake, and the pious who had 



398 



APPENDIX. 



not yet the perfection of saints wept aloud with uplifted arms ; 
they sunk on the earth, they reeled about, exclaiming : ' Too 
soon has the blessed one expired, too soon has the eye closed 
on the world/ But those more advanced in religion calmly 
submitted themselves, saying : * Transitory things are perish- 
able ; in this world there is no permanence.' " 



APPENDIX C. 

Confucius was born 551 b. c, at Shang-ping, near the town 
of Tseuse, in the little kingdom of Lu. His name was Kong, 
called Kong-fu-tse by his disciples, which the Jesuits Latinized 
into Confucius. Kong is master or teacher. His father died when 
he was three years old, and he was carefully brought up by his 
mother, Yan she, at whose death he passed three years in 
mourning and solitary study, thereby no doubt prepared for 
his great work. He taught pure ethics, was a Theist, believed 
in immortality, and his aim in life was fie?'fed virtue. His 
" Seven Steps" are simple: the investigation of things; the 
completion of knowledge ; the sincerity of thought; the recti- 
fying of the heart ; the cultivation of the person ; the regu- 
lation of the family; the government of the State. His system 
of education was superior to that of any nation in his day. He 
held important public offices, and had many followers among 
the thoughtful and influential, but his eminent purity was too 
far above the realm of public life, and his last days were passed 
in retirement and comparative poverty. 

He passed away at the age of seventy-three years, and his 
ideas bear sway to-day among a large number of the more cul- 
tivated Chinese. 

Mencius was born 371 b. c. He was learned, noble, and 
pure in life, was the child of a mother of remarkable character, 
who is held up to-day as a model of motherhood, and his 
education was under her care, owing to the early death of his 
father. 



APPENDIX. 



399 



I follow the translation of Rev. James Legge, D. D., of the 
London Missionary Society, in my extracts from both. 



APPENDIX D. 

Zoroaster, it is supposed, lived between 560 and 700 b. c, 
yet Dollinger fixes an earlier date, and with Rupp gives 1200 
to 1300 b. c. 

Some suppose two Zoroasters. He was a prince, or of high 
birth. The Zendavesta is probably made up of fragments 
of different works, partly by Zoroaster, and the Gathas, or 
songs, are its oldest parts, considered by Dr. Haug as 
dating back to Moses' time, or 1480 b. c. It is the sacred 
and infallible book of the Persians. The Zend language is 
probably a dialect of the Sanscrit, yet scholars are not agreed 
on this. 

I use Mrs. Child's work, an article in the Radical, by C. D. 
B. Mills, of Syracuse, and Ross Winans' " One Religion, Many 
Creeds," for my authorities. 



APPENDIX E. 

The author of the Divine Pymander, or Poemander, is 
spoken of by Lord Bacon as of kingly power, priestly illu- 
mination, and profound wisdom — "Potestate regis, illuminatione 
sacerdotis, eruditione philosofihiae!" I use Dr. Everard's trans- 
lation, made in England, a. d. 1650. The preface says the 
work has been published in Arabic, Greek, Latin, French and 
Dutch. Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus was a king of Egypt. 
Probabilities put him with the Pharaohs before Moses, yet this 
is disputed by some. This remarkable work is held authentic 
by eminent authorities. 



400 



APPENDIX. 



APPENDIX F. 

Marcus Aurelius Antoniuswas Emperor of Rome, a. d. 121. 

Epictetus was a native of Hieropolis, a city of Phrygia, and 
was a slave in Rome to Epaphroditus, a courtier of Nero, 
about a. D. 65. He was made free and died old and poor, ever 
cheerful and kind to all. 

Seneca was of Spanish birth, came to Rome with his father 
in the reign of Augustus Caesar, and rose to eminence, but 
suffered for his liberal opinions. 

All three, especially the two last, were of the Stoic Philos- 
ophers. 

I use the translations in Bonn's Classical Library, 



